Family Staycation!

Every summer we go down to visit my family in south Alabama. While I’ve never lived in Alabama, it feels a bit like a second home in some ways. My sister married a man from Mobile so the two of them and their kiddos all live there. And my parents moved down there while I was in college. So for the past decade or so I’ve gone south to visit family.

{me with my mom & two of my sisters}

And for the past several years when we come down to visit we’ve made a bit of a “stay-cation” out of our visit by finding fun things to do in the area. I guess, it’s not technically a total staycation for everyone because Christopher and I and my sister, Abby, all travel there. But once we’re there, we stay in the general area and do fun things! Usually we just go to the beach (my parents live close to Gulf Shores & my sister lives close to Dauphin Island), but last year we upped the ante. We visited a replica of Stone Henge and held baby alligators. So this year when my parents found a replica of The Holy Land in Lucedale, Mississippi called Palestine Gardens, we knew we had to go!

This was our tour guide, Don. He reminded us a bit of a modern day John the Baptist in all the best ways. He was passionate about sharing his faith and walking us through this tour. We got rained out about 15 minutes into the 1 hour tour, but those 15 minutes were pure gold! Christopher and I can’t wait to come back again and experience the whole tour. We love random roadside attractions like this!

And this is Sherlock Holmes! Excuse the poor quality photo, I was trying to be sneaky about taking it while he was talking. Anyway, we went to the Exploreum in downtown Mobile and had a great time checking everything out. Especially the new Sherlock Holmes exhibit where you get to play detective and try to solve a crime!

Speaking of poor quality photos – here’s another one I took while attempting to stay incognito. 😉 My dad spoke at church on Sunday highlighting the ministry that he and my mom are involved in. I don’t talk about it much here, but I have to tell you guys – I am really proud of my parents and all the work they do!

This weekend also included some normal-life things. Like our nephew’s first flag football game of the season. I may, or may not, have yelled “THAT’S MY NEPHEW!!” when he “tackled” (pulled the tags off) the kid who had the ball. He’s lucky I don’t live close enough to embarrass him all the time. 😉 And of course, after a game well played, we all went out for frozen yogurt. 🙂

It was so good to spend a few days with these two! My sisters, mom, and I all text/talk regularly, but I’m missing out on so much of my niece & nephew’s day-to-day life. I love getting to be there in person with them!

And these little hooligans sure do love their Uncle C (his current uncle name courtesy of Wesley – I do miss when Makenzie used to call him Uncle Kisstopher, though!)

It was a good sort of weekend! Beyond what I photographed & shared, we cooked together and laughed together and shared together. We celebrated belated birthdays and belated mother’s day and early father’s day (it’s a running joke in our family that we never celebrate anything “on time”). We ran through the rain and grocery shopped and just did all the normal life things that made it feel so good to be together. I sure am grateful for family!

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