Back to Reality.....

'Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing,
and no good thing ever dies.' Andy Dufresne

The phrase 'Back to Reality' didn't just pop into my head. 'Pop' would not be the proper expression. No, it was more like reality took a 40 lb sledgehammer, got a running start, and swung it right into my groin. Allow me to explain:

For the last month, Rach and I have been living a life that I imagine would be on par with Andy and Red's first month in Zihuatanejo. The only differences being that Rach is not a tall drink of water, I'm not a man who knows how to get things, and neither one of us has been falsely imprisoned for murdering our spouse...yet. Other than that, the analogy is dead on. And yes, I'm aware that I'm comparing raising 5 kids to a long term prison sentence in a 1940s maximum security prison.

Seriously though, at the end of last month, Rach and I had a kidless free trip to the Ritz Carlton on Lake Oconee (Click here to read about it), then came back to Charleston for two solid weeks without kids. I guess the only way to describe those two weeks would be eerily relaxing. At times, I'd be sitting on the couch watching my new favorite show, More to Love (By the way, I've already nominated Agent Soyez to be the bachelor on Season 2. To put it in his own words, 'If you can't see her @ss from the front, then it ain't big enough!' Wouldn't it be funnier anyway if the bachelor was a really skinny guy? Soyez weighed about a buck thirty-five in college, and luuuvvvved the biggins. I'm gonna have to work on his application video. But I digress). So I'd just randomly jump up as if I was supposed to be doing something, walk around the kitchen aimlessly for a minute, nervously sit back down on the couch, and repeat that process every ten minutes. One of these little distractions almost made me miss a giant (no pun intended) meltdown from the buxom beauty from Baton Rouge on the show.

Anyway, after nearly two weeks of relaxing solitude, we headed down to Ft. Walton Beach, Florida for a week long vacation with the fam. And when you combine me, Rach, the 5 kids, my parents, Racheal's parents, my aunt, my brother, her sister, my cousin, her sister's friend, my cousin's friend, her sister's ex-boyfriend, my cousin's ex-girlfriend, -- Just for clarification though, the previous six names starting with Rach's sister are actually only three different people. I'll let you take a moment to digest that, but in the mean time, cue the dueling banjos......okay back to the list -- Maxine, Maxine's boyfriend, Maxine's boyfriend's 4 year old little girl, Racheal's best friend, and Racheal's best friend's 10 month old little girl, you would think that it would be a full week's worth of fireworks and drama. But nope. Nothing. No drama at all. Completely serene. I think the biggest hiccup that we had was when the boys' faces got really burnt, and they had to take a couple of days off from the sun. They're not complaining though, because it's a whole lot better than the massive chafing problem that they had last year from too much boogie boarding, which led to this scene: Me, reluctantly walking into the bathroom with neosporin on my fingers, seeing the two boys standing there naked, in obvious pain, covering their -umm - units, and then, trying to break the ice a little, I say, 'Alright boys, let's see those willies.' I'm fairly certain that was a low point in all three of our lives.

This trip was a little less stressful. Rach and I would wake up early, work out, run on the beach, get the kids lathered in sunscreen, go out to the beach, play paddleball, go to the pool, get something to eat, go back to the beach, go back to the condo to make a drink, more sunscreen application, go back to the beach, back to the pool, eat dinner, drink a little bit more, go to bed, repeat. Here are some of the highlights:

PADDLEBALL

Paddleball is an ongoing theme for our Florida vacations. It has been for years. And I'm confident that our paddleball tradition will be passed on to our future generations. All of the kids got into it. Some were better than others, but there's definitely time for improvement. However, I'm pretty sure that my brother and I's record of 1,350 consecutive hits will be safe for a while though. B-Lo and Keith got the overall high score this year with 1,100+ hits; Rach and I got the mixed doubles title with 495; Keith, B-Lo, and I got the triples record with 770; Keith, Stacy, Stacie, and I got the quads record with 297, and Tori and I got the adult/kid record with 65. Of all of them, I'm most proud of the 65 with Tori. She hit the ball all over the place. She's like the Ichiro Suzuki of paddleball - she makes good contact, spreads the ball all over the field and makes you work for it. (I realize that most of my readers are probably not baseball fans and would never get that analogy. I apologize, but the only other analogy that I could think of involved Britney Spears and a weak hit and run joke. I'm human.)

That is a look of evil excited determination

I'm not sure who is supposed to get this ball. It looks like Stacie hit it,
but B-Lo is scratching his head, and Beith is tweaking his nipple.

BURYING THINGS

It started with Tori wanting Uncle Beith to bury her in the sand. And as luck would have it, Uncle Beith has extensive experience burying people in the sand. (And that's not some sort of hidden meaning joke, either. I've seen him bury his friend Peggy many times. Never while he was this sober, though.) Anyway, Beith took charge like I've never seen him take charge before. (Again, no joke there.) And soon enough, this was the scene on the beach:

Hey Uncle B-Lo, watch where your hands are going.

And yes, this is just a picture of my brother, my cousin, and I burying Tori in the sand. No, it is not our audition photo for the new Las Vegas show, 'The White Man Group'. I mean seriously, if Right Said Fred made a comeback, added a new member, and ditched the fish net shirts for big ridiculous sunglasses; this would be their album cover. But here's the finished product:

Jax, apparently having seen many 9 ft sand mermaids in his day,
went back to putting sand in his bucket.

Funny Side Note: While my Nanny was taking pictures of the completed mermaid masterpiece, Rach and I grabbed a couple of hand fulls of goldfish crackers and threw them onto Tori. Within seconds, the seagulls were on that mermaid like white on sand--Oh, wait. Nevermind.

Tori did not share our affection for the seagulls.

Later in the week, Scarlett also wanted to be buried in the sand. But in true diva like fashion, she didn't want to get sandy. And then she chastised Uncle B-Lo and Uncle Beith for messing up her fins. Have I mentioned that she's Racheal's daughter?



When we ran out of people to bury, we shifted our focus to jellyfish. On Thursday, we must have fished 200 jellyfish out of ocean and buried them in the sand. And then if you count all of the other fish, crabs, sea urchins, sea slugs, etc. that Rach and the kids pulled out of the water, put into buckets, watched them die a slow death, and then buried back into the sand, I'd say we were responsible for more burials than.....well.....umm....I don't know.........an undertaker? Hey, YOU try coming up with something that kills a lot of people but would still be funny.


FROLICKING

We did a lot of frolicking. Good frolicking. So here's some random frolicking pictures:

Uncle Beith and I look perfectly content watching the kids frolic,
but why are we huddled close together underneath a tent that has no shade?

Rach, Stacie, and Tori watching the seagulls frolic

Okay, I'll admit it. Even though we ARE frolicking,
I mainly posted this picture because of how ridiculously good we all look

But Sadly, our Zihuatanejo had to come to an end. Which would be like Red and Andy having to go back to prison. On Friday, the day before we had to come home, my eye started hurting. It may have been because I had worn my contacts on the beach all week without taking them out. (Emily, if you're reading this, I'm just kidding. I take out my contacts every night. Sometimes twice a day. I don't need an angry pregnant eye doctor coming after me.) So anyway, I took out my contacts, but my eyes were killing me. And I forgot my glasses at home. I thought that maybe the swollen red eye and accompanying blindness would be enough to get Racheal to drive so I could concentrate on my fantasy football draft that was coincidentally going on at the same time, but I was wrong. Rach wanted to take a nap. Did I mention that she's Scarlett's mother? So let's just say I was not so excited to make the blind fantasy football laden kid filled 9 hour drive. Oh, and Jaxon is smack dab in the middle of potty training, so we stopped every half hour so that we could take him into gas station bathrooms, unsuccessfully try to keep him from touching anything, let him use the bathroom, flush the toilet, and hear him yell, 'Bye bye poop.' or 'Bye bye pee pee.' or 'Bye bye gas.' (Yes, he wishes his farts well as they go down the toilet.) Well, we made it back in a smooth 12 hours just before midnight Saturday. Ahhh. Home sweet home....For a minute. Since Jax has been sleeping in either my parents room in Louisiana or our room in Florida for the past 3 weeks, he's gotten used to climbing into the bed in the middle of the night. So of course he wakes us up screaming at 3 am, followed by another 3 hours of kicking us while he sleeps. At least he's consistent, because it's happened every night this week. But here's where reality started swinging that sledgehammer: 4:30 wake up call Monday morning so that I could get back from the gym in time to go with Rach to bring Jax to his first day of school. (Or daycare. But we'll call it a school.) Had to choke back tears dropping him off for his first day. Then I worked all day, picked up Jax, headed home to pick up the fantastic four, then met Rach at the kids' school for 'meet the teacher night'. Luckily, we have 3 kids at the same school, which meant that we only had two schools to visit. But unfortunately, it also meant that we ran out of time before we could meet Scarlett's teacher since all 7 of us were there wandering around the school like a pack of lost elephants. And, of course, Scarlett is our only kid that would get upset at the thought of not getting to meet her teacher. Did I mention that she's Racheal's clone? On the plus side, we REEEEAAAALLLY like Cole and Gavin's teachers. But that was quickly followed by Tori's open house, followed by me taking the boys home to get bathed, fed, and ready for bed, while Rach took the girls to get the last of the school supplies. Tuesday, 4:00 am wake up call so that I could get back from the gym to get the kids ready for school.

That's only the 237th outfit that Doonie put on before school.
Did I mention that Racheal's her mom?

And Hey. I consider it a success that only 3 out of the 5 kids were late to school on the first day. So what if three of them go to the same school? And who cares if Tori's school is right next door? And that Jaxon's school isn't really a school,? And that we can drop him off any time before noon? It was a success, damn it! I Went to work, came home, and cut the grass in the 90 degree heat, which really did a number on my eye infection. Rach finally got to see my allergies in action. My eye turned beat red, swelled up shut, and made me look like Joe Hipp after Mike Tyson was through with him......wait.....nevermind. Joe Hipp never fought Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson was talking about his upcoming bout with Bruce Selden. And the promo for the fight featured audio of Mike Tyson saying, 'Bwuce Sehwdon make Joe Hipp face wook like hambugger.' Don't ask why that's in my head, just know that my face looked like Joe Hipp.

Rach's compassion was as steady as ever though, 'Why didn't you take benedryl before you went out there? You know you're allergic, right? Just put some drops in it and quit whining. Oh, and could you pour me a glass of milk? And use your good eye so you don't spill it.' Have I mentioned that Scarlett is her clone, and she's on her way to becoming more powerful than her mother? And by the way, if I'm ever in a terrible accident and go into a coma, don't think that Rach won't think that I'm bluffing. I can picture the doctor trying to explain to her what happened, and her just standing there, laughing, 'I can't believe you're falling for this! You're a doctor! You went to medical school! Look at him, he's not REALLY in a coma!' A couple of years ago I tore my hamstring the day before we were leaving to go to San Francisco. Rach wasn't sold on the injury though, so she tested it out by letting me carry her bags through the airport. She says everyone won that day. I begged to differ. Anyway, after all of that, we moved onto our next catastrophe. We caught Tori texting boys. Not really so much of a big deal, but she was storing the boys' numbers into her phone as girls' names, and hiding it from us because she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing it. (In case you missed our other Tori/boy drama, click here) Anyway, after the last incident, I did something that I hadn't done in a very very long time. I read a book. The book was called Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, and boy did it come in handy. So Rach, Tori, and I stayed up until about 11 pm dealing with that issue, but that 4:30 am wake up call was creeping around the corner.

So yes, it's back to reality for the King clan. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ice down my groin.