Just beachy

Long car rides can be exciting or they can be the road trip to hell. Either way getting there is have the fun. Surviving is the other half. I took my family to Havelock, NC for a few days. For me it was to visit a few places and second, to take my family to the beach for a while. Luckily, both of my boys have a Nintendo DS so they stayed quiet for an hour before they started complaining. My wife wanted to take pictures of every road sigh, water tower, and pretty much everything we drove passed.

When we finally got to Havelock and unpacked we all took part in a family nap. A few hours later, we ate, made a few phone calls and by the afternoon, the boys were playing in the ocean and my wife resting in a beach chair. So I stayed with two boys who wanted to swim to England. At times, they went so deep that even I couldn’t touch the bottom. Nevertheless, they swam around me like sharks on a Big Mac. As the sun was setting I was able to net in the boys then pick up a pizza and watched two boys complaining about having to leave the ocean and pass out from exhaustion at the same time. They fell asleep while eating dinner.

With a baby sitter on stand by, my wife and I went riding around with a camera in hand and a Wal-Mart near by. Nothing like taking your wife shopping so she can buy every postcard, key chains and whatnots made in creation. She also bought a few shot glasses for a friend of ours in Fukuoka, Japan. When we visited the Military base, she took tons of pictures of military equipment, badges, planes, guns and everything else in the place. She did enjoy the huge gun by the entrance. She wanted to buy it but we were a few hundred thousand dollars short.

Even though we were there for a couple of days, everyone had a great time and got to do many activities. One last trip to the beach and family outing before the boys go back to school. One more very long car ride listening to two boys complaining they forgot to charge up their Nintendo DS’s and a wife who didn’t charge up the camera battery. In addition, huge sunburn on my entire back, shoulders and belly area. If I paint my feet greenish blue I would look like a stop sign.

Through headaches, sunburn, a growing lack of money and non-stop complaining one would be screaming every curse word known to mankind. Seeing as I know many Japanese curse words as well, the eloquence would be grand. After returning home and having two boys running inside to start recharging their DS’s, a wife complaining about all the cats refusing to eat dry food while we were away and having to feed five Steven King’s Cu-Jo’s I was faced with a huge question growing in my mind.

As I with sunburn, unpacked the car and after settling down with the AC and TV on, I relaxed with another fan blowing on my back to cool down the burning. Could I go to work the next day with severe sunburn or stay home and keep applying ointment to my burnt area? I stayed home and planned to rest. Rest after I took my wife to the Post Office to pick up a package and a trip to the grocery store followed by two boys fighting over Lego toys. By this time, I wished I had gone to work instead.

But as I was finally resting with gel all over my back and shoulders watching NCIS on the USA channel, two boys came to me at different times saying they had a great time at the beach. They enjoyed shopping at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Wings beach store, looking for seashells, making sand castles and all the other activities. The way and how they said it was pure magical. My wife rubbing ointment all over me and two boys coming up to us saying they had a great time being together. It was not rehearsed or planned out. It was one of those moments where all the pain I was going through just disappeared.

I felt like I was king of the world.