Yay we're at the beach! The weather is on-and-off crappy but we got some pool time in yesterday and hope to have lots of time outside today. Our condo is awesome. It has 3 pools and a kiddie pool which kept LG entertained yesterday. Fortunately he met some little boys who shared their pool toys with him because like a dumbass I didn't bring any...but after dinner we got some so he's all stocked up for today.

Anywho- our road trip was an adventure, which I documented for your reading pleasure. Carry on! 

Greetings from Hwy 45 South...in the middle of nowhere Mississippi. For those of you that have never had the pleasure of traveling on a small highway through Mississippi, let me tell you, you are really missing out.

We have driven through some breathtaking small towns that contain about as much charm as the bottom of my shoe. Take Shubuta, Mississippi, for example.  I would write more about Shubuta, Mississippi, but I didn't notice anything else to write about. There was a herd of goats a while back. Then I started wondering what goats are being raised for in the middle of rural Mississippi. I mean, there were a lot of goats.

LG enjoyed saying Shubuta over and over and over and over again. He thought he was saying a bad word and getting away with it.
“Gigi, say 'Shubuta'”
“Gigi said Shubuta!” (insert maniacal laugh)
“Shubuuuuuuuuuuuuta!”
“Shubuta!”

Or the ever-popular Bukatunna, Mississippi, which is where we're about to make our 2nd road-trip stop.

“Jacob! We're about to stop in Bukatunna!” (Pronounced Buck-a-tuna for those of you that are lucky enough not to know that). 
“Bucket tuna Mommy?! Where?!”
“No...Buck-a-tuna!”
“Bucky Too Too.” (Hysterical laughter ensues. Another bad word to a 3 year-old, apparently.)

Now he's saying “Shake your Boota.” over and over in a sing-song voice. Cute.

The Bukatunna stop was interesting. It was a gas station/grocery store/restaurant. I saw items on those shelves that have no-doubt been there since before I was walking. The Cokes are in glass bottles (yum!) but over in the coolers they do have the modern-day plastic bottles, too. Since Diet Dr. Pepper isn't in glass bottles and never will be, I had to go for the plastic. Boo.

Behind the glass case was a counter full of food. Fried food. Fried and battered food. It all looked like the exact same thing (fried batter), but in several different shapes. Burrito shapes. Chicken shapes. Potato shapes. Corn dog shapes. Chicken livers shapes (on a stick), Jalapeno popper shapes. When I asked my mom to refresh my memory about what was lurking in the case she says “something else that looked like popcorn shrimp or something.” shapes. Basically it's where arteries go to clog, explode and die.

We walked out with Cokes (in plastic) and a few bags of chips. LG's hands are bright orange from the Doritos and he's still singing about Shubuta...

“She-Pooota!”

Oh, another interesting factoid about this little voyage to the sun...Mississippi seems to be encountering a plague of some sort. These little flittery black bugs are EVERYWHERE. Literally our windshield is covered in their corpses and when we got out of the car we had to walk through a cloud of bugs.

“She-Poota!”
“Jacob. Enough with Shubuta.”
“She-Poota!”

(Insert thoughts of Whitehousemom throwing herself out of the moving car, only to retreat in fear of the bug epidemic. And the goats.)

Welcome to Alabama.

LG is now orange from head to toe.

Hopefully he will sleep soon. We're about 50 miles from Mobile...on a 2 lane highway no less. Good times.

Some other interesting things I have seen.

- A building with a sign that said Fish Camp. What is a Fish Camp?
- My mother's inability to go five minutes without texting. This is terrifying on a 2 lane highway, btw. Also, if I had been doing that in my younger days, in her presence, she would have killed me. I reminded her of this, and she agreed.
- A variety of roadkill.

(Note to self: I really like this Lady Antebellum song...I shall download it.)

Alabama is not immune to the Bug Plague. We're in a blizzard of black bugs right now. If these bugs are hanging out at the beach I am not going to be a happy camper.

So far I haven't seen too many of the bugs here. However, the front of my mom's car is literally caked with thousands of them. It's so disgusting. Upon closer inspection, I realized these critters are the harmless little guys I grew up knowing as "love bugs" because ahhh well... here, see for yourself:



They do that. A lot. No wonder there are so many of them.

B is for:

Boots. I got ordered these guys yesterday. Aren't they cute? (FYI, it wouldn't be a whitehousemom post without a Bargain. Zappos lists them for $93 but yours truly found them on overstock.com for $49.99.  To answer your question, no, it does not get cold enough here to warrant such warm and toasty Boots, but I don't care, just look at them. I can deal with sweaty feet.

 

Beach!!!  This weekend my mom decided to take a week-long trip down to the Beach in a couple of weeks. Guess who she invited? ME! (and LG of course, Hub will be working, of course) But what does this mean?  It means I will be here for a week: (I will not be wearing the boots)

( More yummy beachy pictures behind the cut )
While I am at the beach I will be doing this:

1. Whatever I want.
2. Burning Tanning
3. Dodging hurricanes
4. Reading gratuitious amounts of silly novels
5. Writing said novels
6. Hanging out with LG and my Mom