FL Recap

Random Fact: There is a town in Alaska named Chicken (named this because of the abundance of ptarmigan and after much disagreement on how to officially spell that, they settled on Chicken, to avoid embarrassment....because, living in Chicken, Alaska is much less embarrassing!) It has a population of 17. And each year, for the past three years, they have held the Chickenstock Music Festival. (Hey, I am not making this up!) And one day, if my kids stay on track, I may just ship them all there!

We are back in Minnesota after two and a half weeks in Florida visiting friends and family. We are happy to be back in the 70-degree and practically mosquito-less weather (this has been a very mild summer here in MN to say the least!) and I will very quickly recap our trip for my avid readers.

1. We arrived.

2. We sweated, a lot.

3. We got eaten by mosquitoes big enough to be living in a zoo.

4. We swam, and swam, and swam.

5. We sweated some more, which made our bites itch.

6. We complained about our skin melting, as we watched the peahens and peacocks walk through the grass and noted the cactus wall growing in the yard across the street.

7. We visited with old friends and family while scratching and melting.

8. We swam some more.

9. We watched some crabs succumb to their death in a pot of boiling water. The kids ate them with ketchup.

10. We left.

It was a very uneventful trip actually but there were a couple conversations that I feel are blog-worthy.

One day after Kurt arrived, we decided to take all the kids out to breakfast at the Blueberry Muffin (a personal favorite.) Kurt and I sat with Lily while my parents had Aidan, Madeline, Lily and cousin Jonathan at their table. In the course of the breakfast, Kurt started asking the kids about their favorite players on the Steelers.

Aidan knew right away: "Troy Polamalu!" he said excitedly.

"And there's Hines Ward and Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes and..." we went on.

Lily chimed in: "And there's Turkey."

Um, sure Lily. Whatever you say. We just laughed. So then Kurt starts telling Lily all the various nicknames on the team.

"They call Polamalu the Tasmanian Devil, and Roethlisberger is called Big Ben because he is so tall and when Jerome Bettis played, they called him The Bus and..."

"Well, what is Turkey's nickname?" Lily asked.

"Uh, isn't it just Turkey?"

"No. It's Chickenwing," she assured us.

You just wait and see. The Steeler known as Turkey (but called Chickenwing) is VERY intimidating!

***

The other conversation took place in the car. The kids were talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up.

"Mom, can we be two things when we are adults?" Madeline asked.

"Sure, Madeline," I said.

"Then I'm going to be a princess and a ballerina," Madeline said.

"And I'm going to be a fireman, or a police car, or a dump truck," Jonathan said.

"Well, I'm going to be a princess and a Transformer," Lily said.

"Lily, you can't be a Transformer," Aidan, our know-it-all, chimed in. "Transformers are not even real."

Because, you know, you can be a dump truck.

(Stay tuned for the trip recapped in pictures.)