The Trip to Biloxi Mississippi
Greetings to everyone.
We set off for Biloxi, Mississippi on Tuesday, March 29th. Our plan was to put several hours of the trip to bed before it really started. The picture above shows a sample of the weather before we left. The picture at the bottom shows what we arrived to.
Rebecca scheduled our first stop of our 22 hour trip in Trinidad, Colorado the first night. It was just north of Pueblo that we finally got ahead of (or behind) the storm that hit the Front Range about an hour before we departed Denver. Xavier was fresh from his nap and had a little exercise before we loaded him into the car. Rebecca did a brilliant job of packing the 90 while Xavier slept; she got everything in the back in a single layer; our rear-view mirror could still be used!
It's amazing what constitutes importance when packing for limited space. Rebecca had two suitcases, one for her military garb and one for her civvies. I had a small suitcase packed with all the clothes I expected to need for the next three months. Xavier shared Rebecca's civvies suitcase with his clothing needs. We also had laptops and several of Xavier's toys. We even broke down and bought a DVD player for the car to keep Xavier from melting down (Aunt Chelle was not here this time to sit with him and keep him company—no room for her anyway; we were tight on space).
Xavier did well for the three and a half hours to Trinidad. He played in the hotel lobby and restaurant before going to bed. All the hotel staff fell in love with him.
Rebecca planned a nine hour drive, a six hour drive and a three hour drive over the next three days. Her thoughts were that Xavier would put up with a longer drive up front, but not in the end, nor would he put up with three six hour days. She was right on the money with her foresight.
The DVD player definitely paid for itself. We now have the dialog to the movie "Planes" memorized, though we saw very little of the movie ourselves. To keep the adults sane, we stopped at a Mardel's and bought a CD series: Living Beyond Ourselves; a series on the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We listened to it while Xaiver watched "Planes" and "Cars".
Near the middle of day 2 (the six hour leg), Xavier began mournfully asking to go home. He was sick of riding in the car. On the final day, he must have realized home was not an option, so he just wanted to go to "the room," which meant the hotel.
Our final hotel did have a pool in it and a hot tub. Xavier, remembering the hot tub in Florida, after seeing the pool and tub wanted his swim diaper. He became relentless about getting the swim diaper. When we got into Biloxi and moved the luggage into the apartment, he wanted to know where his swim diaper was. When we visited the commissary to provision the apartment, he reminded us several times to get swim diapers. His insistence that we get him a swim diaper and to show him we had it grew especially intense after he saw the beach across the street! From that point on, all we heard was "swim diaper" and "beach" out of his mouth.
We did spend some time on the beach. It is a beach along the Gulf of Mexico. Xavier chased gulls, waded into the water, which is shallow and small waves, dug in the sand and fully made use of his swim diaper.
