Beach vacation, what beach vacation?

Greg's boss has a beach house on Anna Maria Island in Florida and graciously offered it to us for the week free of charge.

That is perfect for our budget with saving for the twins, so we jumped at the chance.

We asked Justin and Regina to come and meet us there to celebrate Justin's 24th birthday. We were SO EXCITED in fact, that we decided to pack up and leave Friday afternoon, so that we could spend all day Saturday exhausted, but at the beach.

Ahhh, the best laid plans.

What we knew, but failed to connect the dots on, is this:

The house is for sale.

The listing says- "Perfect for renovation"

His boss has not been there at all this year.

Loosely translated that means that there may or may not have been a decline in the upkeep of the place.

We stumbled in blearly eyed at 1 AM and opened the door to the lovely smell of mildew. We slept in the most uncomfortable bed for a few hours, and woke up to two very excited little girls and one VERY disgusting house.

In the bosses defense, he doesn't live there and he is selling it. Why do too much to it? 

Totally understand.

However.....

Besides being insanely dirty, the couch smelled like a wet dog.The cabinets were sparse, and we would have been hard pressed to cook anything on the stove from 1965. AND worse yet,it had BLACK MOLD everywhere. We could clean all day, and the mold is not safe for our Gianna, who is having surgery on Sept 2nd.

We made the unfortunate decision that A) there was NO WAY in Hades we could stay there, 

and

B) there was no way we could afford peak rates at another house to accomodate 6 people.

So, knowing that our son and his girlfriend were heading down Sunday, we took the girls to the beach for a 1/2 hour to gather shells, and re-packed the car to head for home.

Yeah, here's the math: 8 hours driving+ 6 hours of restless sleep+ 30 minutes of beach time+10 hours on the ride home due to freaky weather= 2 grumpy parents.

Oh, but it gets better!

Aria complained that her throat was hurting so I gave her a motrin. A new flavor of motrin I might add.

About 5:30 PM, she says her lip hurts, and we think she is whining, so we don't think too much of it.

At 6:30, we stop for drive thru dinner and she starts crying that her lip hurts to eat. We turn around to see the WHOLE RIGHT SIDE of her face hugely swollen including the top lip which looks like she has a fat lip. Her cheek is red and rashy, so we start looking for a store, ANY store, so that we can get some benadryl in her. I was so scared that it could start constricting her airway with the sudden onset. We found a CVS, literally in the middle of nowhere (Thank YOU Lord) and gave her the maximum dose. We called Children's in Atlanta, thinking we could make it to the hospital if we sped. Her redness started decreasing in 30 minutes, and the hospital said that they thought it was safe to take her home and watch her.

We checked her every hour all night long. With such a sudden onset and no reason we could think of why, it could happen again.

Sleepless night number two. Maybe God is preparing us for the twins arrival?

Today she is still swollen, although much less, but we have NO IDEA what caused it. I am taking her to the Dr in the morning to get his take on it and hopefully get an EPI-Pen just in case this happens again.

So in happier news, Justin and Regina are on their way as we speak. We are trying to redeem ourselves, by getting a boat to go water-skiing tomorrow for his birthday. Not quite the sand and surf, but as close as we can get.

Lessons Learned: Beware of free beach houses.

And carry copious amounts of benadryl at all times.

The end.