Getaway….then a reality check

Last weekend, The Husband and I had a chance to get out of dodge for the weekend and enjoy  some much-needed couple time. Yesterday was our 8th anniversary, so we celebrated early at Bald Head Island.

If you haven’t been there, you need to add it to your list of places to visit. You have to take a ferry to get there (that’s us on the ferry above), and there are no cars allowed on the island. Everyone drives golf carts, and there really isn’t much in the way of things to do. There’s a little market, a few shops, the beach, a golf course, and beautiful maritime forest (please note that “maritime” is a pretty new addition to my vocabulary).

For us, the weekend involved getting our golf cart stuck on a 2x4 (within 30 minutes of arriving), and then being rescued by a random couple. Random couple turned out to be not so random, and in fact The Husband’s old Boy Scout leader. Seriously. Well, not the whole couple. But the man. So, the rescue and subsequent recognition of one another resulted in an invitation to come over to their house for drinks. They had a merry bunch with them, about half of whom we actually knew, so we had fun.

Now, these folks were all about 15-30 years older than us, and intrigued with technology. While they were so nice and fun to be with, I was amused when one of them just randomly brought out their iPad and started gazing at the stars with it, using some stargazing app. The funny thing was that on an island with no cars and regulations preventing you from using any porch lights, you get a pretty darn good view of the stars. Like, really, really good. So I just couldn’t really see why we would want to look at an iPad screen rather than the real thing. But I’m strange like that.

The iPad owner also felt it necessary to show me a few YouTube clips, including such classics as “Charlie Bit My Finger” and the roller skating Evian babies. And then there was some video involving a cat. Of course.

Luckily, the wine was flowing, so You Tube was tolerable.

The rest of the weekend involved a couple of bike rides, lunch on the water, some time on the beach, an 8.5 mile run (for me, not The Husband), reading on the screened porch, eating Sweet Sixteen powdered donuts (it was vacation, after all), and perfecting my golf cart driving skills. It was so nice to get away.

The return, however, was not the homecoming I envisioned. A friend of mine mentioned to me recently that anytime you leave town without your kids, you pay a big price when you get back. That was certainly true in this case. Ava hardly greeted us, and  Davis just didn’t know what to think. And when the grandmothers left, it was bedlam. Ava cried for a good 90 minutes. Davis was fine, but exhausted. Both kids were asleep by 7:15pm. Frankly, I wasn’t far behind them. Today was the first day that Ava was back to her version of normal, and I no longer felt that I was being punished for leaving her. That might have something to do with my threat to keep her home from school the next time she acts up.

For now, I will leave you with a good little Ava-ism: we stopped at J.Crew tonight to get her a headband (photo below). As we were leaving, I said, “Ava, I really like that headband. It’s very cute on you.” Her response? “Thanks, Mommy. That’s kind of the point of headbands.”