Florida: the day after the wedding

I'm in Washington for the weekend and I've just asked my dad if starting projects, leaving them unfinished, and then returning to them months later is a Jackson trait. He said he thinks it's a human trait. And so, in typical human fashion, I am finally blogging some of the photos from our family's trip to Florida back in September.

After my baby brother done got hitched over labor day weekend, the rest of the Jackson clan merged travel plans with our old family friends, the Longs, and partied like it was 2003. Or 1999. Or 1995. Or 1989. We have known the Longs since we kids were wide-eyed, rolly polly little tykes. We've homeschooled, churched, played, hiked, carpentered, gardened, video gamed, pizza partied, and world traveled together as long as we've known each other. It was only natural to turn Marc's wedding into a Jackson/Long vacation. Our only regret was that our dear friends the D's couldn't join us.

The ever-growing Jackson/Long Crew, minus Marc and Jaime

Jake, the oldest of the Long kids, is a year younger than I. He and his wife, Kristin, are the first of our clan to have kids. Their daughter, Lucy, is an 18-month-old bundle of sweetness and spunk, and we absolutely delight in her. We spent the first few hours of our vacation gathered around her in a circle of adoration while she tried on sunglasses, played with stuffed animals, and did the stanky leg. There was also some nae nae-ing. And some whipping. Little Lucy is a daaaaancing machine.

The second of our clan to have kids is Simon, the third eldest in the Long family. He and his wife, Taylor, got married a few years back and then went and had the cutest little blue-eyed baby you've ever seen. Her name is Joanna but we call her Jo.

Our Florida trip was the first time our families have gathered from across the continent since the babies were born, so we adjusted our normal partying style. Normally, we sit around and eat cheap pizza while listening to spoken word poetry recitations, wrestling, solving the world's problems, and taping our noses up. We ALWAYS tape our noses up.

Our annual nose taping, circa 2012ish

In Florida, however, we were too busy playing with the babies to even consider pulling out the tape. No doubt some of the in-laws breathed a covert sigh of relief. 

 The first day of vacation a number of people from the wedding party and guest list partied with us. These are people with whom we've also traversed the years. It was so much fun having so many good friends squished under the same roof.

The whoooole crew

We spent a lot of our time outside chatting...





...and inside adoring the babies some more.



At one point the men got up and made us dinner,

 which was absolutely, 100% fine with us gals.

We managed to visit Florida smack dab in the middle of monsoon season, so the sky dumped buckets of water off and on throughout each day, but that didn't keep us from spending much of our time in the pool. When we tired of plain old swimming, we devised a rather complex game in which we had to toss a ball around the pool from person to person whilst jumping, spinning, etc. Dirk held Lucy's zebra inner tube at the far end of the pool, into which we had to eventually throw the ball. It was much tougher than we thought it would be to get the ball through our human circuit and into the hoop. We attempted it about 25 times, rotating people to different stations along the way, before we FINALLY nailed.it. Pam, the matriarch of the Long clan, captured our winning effort on camera, along with 200 other photos of every failed attempt.

For our winning attempt, Natasha (my brother Aaron's wife) threw  the ball to Brittany right as she jumped into the pool.

 Brittany (Dirk Long's wife) caught the ball and threw it to Jake...

...who caught it mid jump.

 Jake threw the ball to his sister, Jena...

...who threw the ball to the zebra hoop.

 My sister Rebecca and I were present near the hoop in case Jena's throw wasn't perfect.

Fortunately, it was perfect. Jena shot and SHE SCORED and the ball ended up snugly in Dirk's zebra hoop. 

Sweet, sweet victory.

For our second day of vacay we climbed out of the pool, packed up the babies, and headed to the beach. I hope to blog about our beach day soon. And by soon I mean sometime before January 2016.

Happy Saturday, home skillets.

-Sarah

© by scj