Florida Vacation - Day 5 and trip home

Jeremy had to work today - he had a looming deadline and spent the day at Jim and Barb's on his laptop. Barb went with me to take the kids to yet another beach. We started in the town of Venice, at the gift shops, where the kids wanted to spend their travel money. For John, a shark's tooth necklace. For Meg, earrings. For Helen, a dress (in a batik print). James was feeling frugal and still making up his mind. :)

We then drove over to the beach near Venice which was yet again different. The sand was coarser and there was a full line of jagged rocks/boulders at the water's edge. There was also a stiff wind and steady waves today. This made swimming tough, but the kids had chosen this beach to search for shark teeth fossils. They entertained themselves for several hours with digging and sifting through the sand in 2-3 feet of water.

Then, in the late afternoon, we picked up Jeremy and took a long walk along the Casey Key Beach from our first day. The kids doubled the size of their seashell collection, which was already substantial. 

I may have photos to add to today's post later, or maybe not. I had the smaller (pocket-sized) camera with me this day, and I haven't transferred those photos to the computer yet. However, it turned out that the camera card was nearly full when I set out that day, so I don't know if I have any photos of worth, anyway. 

Still, even without pictorial evidence, we had another great day. Well, except maybe for Jeremy.

The drive home (7 AM Saturday to 10 PM Saturday in southern VA; 8 AM Sunday to 8 PM Sunday) was fairly uneventful - we pushed hard. The only remarkable event was that Helen got sick - again. Strange, after a whole week of being fine. Then again, maybe it was her diet. To keep the kids happy during a 15-hour travel day, we let just about anything go. Including that Helen wanted to eat only baby-food pouches of applesauce (several) and an oversized bag of Cheetos from a gas station. Ugh.

This time, when she threw up, it was at 1 AM, in our hotel bed. Still, NOT in the car! (Yay, Helen!) A bit of an embarrassing mess to leave at the hotel, but nice to leave the dirty sheets and towels with someone else, for sure. And nice to be able to have room service deliver clean sheets when you are dealing with this in the middle of the night. I need to figure out how to get that at home, sometimes.