Vacation, Day 1

Wow. 

We left Texas around 3 PM on Wednesday, heading east to our destination. The plan was to get to Shreveport and eat dinner there so Paisley could get out of the car for a while and stretch her legs before we made the longest part of the 11 hour drive.

So, we stopped at Cracker Barrel in Shreveport and had a good meal and we were back on the road around 7. The rest of the driving was rather uneventful. Paisley had her DVD player and that made the time in the car perfectly acceptable to her, although from 7 PM to 2:30 AM, she only took a "nap" for a little over an hour. 

We were all glad to get into Gulf Shores ~ we pulled into the management company's office around 2:30 AM. Mike picked up the keys and we made the short drive to the condo building. Here's where the adventure began:

We drove through the parking garage and were just about to get into the unloading zone and Paisley started throwing up. Man, I've never seen that much puke come out of her. I am not sure what caused that, but if she's anything like I was as a kid, traveling in the car and traveling in the wee hours of the morning just don't settle well with her stomach. Oh how I wish that were the only challenge we dealt with in the next few hours!

So, we got Pais cleaned up as good as we could and unloaded all of our stuff onto 2 sort-of luggage carts and headed up to the 12th floor. We arrived at the door to our condo unit around 3 AM. We were all ready to go in, throw our stuff down and pass out. There was a slight problem, however: the keys to our condo didn't work. The door would not open. Um. Yeah. 

This place isn't like a hotel where we could just go down to the front desk and ask for another set. These condos re individually owned and managed by different companies, all of which have OFF-SITE offices. Awesome. 

So, after Mike and I had our Oh S*&t moment, we called customer service. They said they would have to come out and see what was going on. So, we waited for them to come over to the property from their office, only to test out the keys yet again and confirm what we already knew - the damn things don't work. 

So the guy left again to go back to his office and find some other keys to another unit that might be vacant that they happen to manage in this particular building. Here we were, all of our crap loaded onto carts, standing in the breezeway of some random place, a 2-year old in my arms asleep in PJs with puke all over them, Mike and I barely able to keep our eyes open. 

The guy comes back about 20-30 minutes later with keys to a larger condo several floors down. We got all of our stuff in and he informed us that we could stay there until they found out how to get into the original condo we booked. The condo we stayed in that night had another family coming in Thursday, so we couldn't be there for too long. 

So, there you go. The next morning, Paisley and Mike slept in a little bit and I stayed on the phone with the management company trying to find out what was happening with the original condo, since we still had not unpacked anything, unable to really begin our trip. When they finally got a "key technician" out to the unit, apparently all that was wrong was a few loose screws in the deadbolt.

While he was working on it, I went in to check out what was supposed to be our condo for the week. We had specifically picked this unit out online, it looked like it was kept up really nicely, etc. When I walked in, it reeked of smoke. Unbelievable. 

So, by the end of Thursday, we ended up in the 3rd condo of the building for us and it has turned out to be great. We were able to get in and get our stuff unloaded and start our actual vacation around 3 PM on Thursday. 

Thank God for no issues on the road as we headed down, and thank God Paisley wasn't actually sick, just had a little upset stomach that morning. Whew...