Summer 2020: Florida Cousins

Officially today is the 96th day of social distancing/the worldwide corona virus pandemic comes to Tennessee. However, it is also summer and we trying to have a good summer, while also being cautious. Such is life for the past several months.

Last week my brother randomly asked if the kids and I wanted to pop down to Florida with him for the weekend. This is a trip we try to do once or twice a year to visit our sister's family. Unfortunately we didn't make it down at all last year, and with the corona virus pandemic, I think we all have kind of hit a wall and were craving family time.

Since we are all healthy, I threw caution to the wind (after making sure Daniel was okay with us traipsing about the country in 2020) and we made the trip south to Tallahassee with my brother. Our experience was that traveling during a pandemic wasn't too bad. Though we did have an issue finding open bathrooms for the kids. Fast food restaurants were generally open only for drive through, so we had to hunt for gas stations. Once we even stopped at a Whole Foods (we did buy apples so we weren't just using them for their clean bathroom!).

As for the weekend, we surprised my niece and nephew and the kids all had a blast being together non stop. We took a boat out to Dog Island (a repeat of a trip we did a couple of years ago where we were temporarily stranded and a storm rolled in!). This time, our outing was a little more low key, and the kids had a ton of fun swimming in the Gulf.

Though it was not completely without mishaps. Papa (my brother-in-law's dad) started to take off while we were all on the beach. We were dumbfounded that he might leave us again (like two years ago), but it turns out he was just going to help someone whose boat had drifted away from the island with a young girl on board.

The second mishap was running aground a sandbar on the way back to Carabelle. We missed the channel and couldn't tell it was shallow because the water was so choppy. Thankfully we weren't stuck, but it was a surprise to grind suddenly to a halt.

After boating, we went and grabbed seafood. If you know my brother, you know he needs his raw oyster fix whenever we go to Florida. Jack surprised us as the only kid that tried a raw oyster. He was not a fan. Levi's face sums up how the other kids felt about this delicacy!

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Cannon balls with cousins (and Uncle Mark). #summer2020 #voylesfam #floridacousins #mohaus2020

A post shared by Cheree Moore (@mo_haus) on Jun 14, 2020 at 3:01pm PDT

Back in Tallahassee, the kids had fun doing kid things: bouncy house, trampoline, playing Uno, playing video games, playing tornado... We also went swimming at a neighbor's pool and then the kids did their semi-annual talent show with their Uncle Mark.

I love seeing them all cut loose with the dancing and being silly. I didn't catch this on my video, but my niece, Izzy, is really funny as the emcee. She always has off the cuff jokes that keep us laughing.

Our trip home was uneventful. It was a quick trip, but every time we made a pit stop we were reminded of the pandemic via everyone wearing masks. Our experience while traveling was that every person we encountered was super polite and kind (like extra). Looking forward to seeing family a couple more times as the summer progresses.

Hurricane Irma

Last month Hurricane Irma made its way here, downgrading to a tropical storm as it reached our home. This weekend Hurricane Nate is taking a different trajectory but is currently in the process of making its way here as a tropical depression. It has been raining non-stop since late last night, so it feels to right sip some hot tea and write a blog post about our impromptu cousins weekend last month that was brought on by Hurricane Irma...

Almost exactly a year after Hurricane Hermine hit Tallahassee and prompted an unplanned cousins weekend for our kids, my sister Angela and her family once again found themselves in the path of the potentially deadly Hurricane Irma.

While Hermine hit Tallahassee as a Category 1 storm, Irma was projected to hit north Florida as a Cat 3. The magnitude of this hurricane and projected path through the entire state caused the largest ever evacuation of the state the week before Irma made landfall.

Angela, a part-time nurse, was not on her hospital's disaster team this year, so she packed her kids up and they made their way to Tennessee, leaving her husband Robert behind (he also works at a hospital and was unable to leave).

It was a strange weekend, waiting for the hurricane to make its way through the state of Florida. Angela was anxious all weekend and constantly on the watch for new updates about the storm.

Like everyone in her situation, she was generally distracted by what might happen to her city, home and husband she had left behind. Throughout the weekend, the radar ominously showed a storm that was bigger than the entire state of Florida.

Thankfully the kids didn't really know what was going on, they were just excited about their unexpected cousin weekends. And we did our best to take everyone's mind off the impending storm! Our brother, Mark, even came over from Nashville to hang out with all of us.

As we know now, the storm lessened and much of Florida was spared the devastation that had threatened. Unfortunately, the following week, Hurricane Maria pummeled an already impacted Caribbean. Many of the islands, including the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, are still suffering a month later.

The storm ended up hitting Tallahassee as a Cat 1 (instead of the predicted Cat 3). Many trees were blown down and power outages were rampant throughout the state. As it turned north toward Tennessee, it was downgraded to a tropical storm.

When it reached east Tennessee, our town actual ended up experiencing wind damage and power outages due to the storm – we even had our boys sleep in our room in case a tree fell on the roof during the night.

Ironically my sister had tried to escape the storm but it still found her in Tennessee!

While Angela and her kids were here, our kids played as much as they could. We took them on a hike to Rainbow Lake, visited the Creative Discovery Museum, got hot chocolate at the Hot Chocolatier in downtown Chattanooga, roasted s'mores, and watched old movies with popcorn as we sat by a roaring fire in our wood stove.

Not a bad way to spend an unexpected long weekend together.

Thankfully my sister's home was spared – a tree did fall in their yard and knocked a section of gutter off their roof, but that was pretty minor compared to damage that others experienced.

We look forward to more cousin's weekends but hopefully no more that are because of the weather!