Vacation Prep

We have had a week long vacation planned for months. We will drive about 8 hours to mine for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds National Park. Finders keepers!! After a 2 night stay, and a very long, hot day of mining (my guess), we will drive another 8 hours to Perdido Key in Pensacola, Florida. Beach love here I come! We will spend 2 nights in an AirBNB and then journey home for 2 days – route TBD.

This will be our first major vacation with all 4 of us. Yes, Beckett has traveled, but not like this. We are squeezing as much into this vacation as we can by not staying anywhere too long and keeping our options open. We have a few things we would like to do, but our only must-dos are mine and swim in the Gulf of Mexico. My skin is in need of a saltwater soak!

In this past week, we have dehydrated apples, bananas, strawberries, mangoes and pineapple. Tyler made several pounds of beef jerky. I have organized snacks, drinks, and quick meals (PBJ), washed the laundry, packed up the kids, made lap boards for the kids, gathered activities for the kids, started to organize everything, scheduled someone to take care of our mail and gardens, and gone shopping for misc. items we will use. We have been busy and there is still more to do. Road trips for a family of 4, trying to be somewhat frugal in expenses can be tricky. I also think I’m earning my vacation just by preparing for it. I know I’m leaving something out and we will end up leaving something behind. That is how life goes.

This vacation is set up for Cambry. We planned this trip with her in mind, as our focus. She has always enjoyed rocks. Truly! She has a very full collection of different rock types. She is always wanting to mine and dig for new ones. She also has a love for Minecraft. We thought we would bring the mining to life for her at Crater of Diamonds. Obviously, we aren’t guaranteed a diamond, but we are hoping the dig will be plenty fun! She also chose the beach. The closest ‘real’ beach, saltwater beach, is over 15 hours away from us. Mining just happened to be the halfway point. We kinda lucked out there. Cambry went to the beach with us at 4 months old. She has been begging to go back so she can remember it for a couple years now. Who am I to deny such a request?? I too love the beach and plan to enjoy every minute of this Cambrycation we are going on – minus maybe a few hours of the actual in van car ride.