Vacation: Getting there and day 1

When we planned this vacation, we called our community rec sports office to inquire when the end of baseball/T-ball was (February). Apparently they didn't know but didn't want to tell us that. They gave us some fictitious date because the season actually lasted two weeks longer. So we blissfully planned our vacation for the week of July 10 through July 18. And then everything that the boys wanted to do fell on that week. Baseball continued, football camp took place, and they moved scout camp from the week before to that week. Hooray for organization! The boys were really good about missing out on things they wanted to do and Older Boy also ended up missing a swim meet. We didn't want him to miss three baseball games so we didn't embark on our journey until after he played his 1:00 game. That meant we left the house around 3 pm. That's a pretty late start (and we learned a lesson and will N.E.V.E.R. do that again!). The entire trip takes about 12 hours from our house to Litchfield and we did plan on staying over night but the trip took longer due to the one hour stop we had to make to find some food. I packed a bunch of things to eat in the car but everyone was tired of lunch meat, pretzels and yogurt at one point so we found a Burger King where the Little Man can usually eat safe french fries. This was the busiest BK ever! We were there for an hour. We also told them about the allergies, made sure they had a dedicated fryer, asked that they scoop the Little Man's fries right out of the bin and immediately bag them so that no onion ring cross contamination would occur. And we went on our merry way. We stayed over night in Winston Salem, NC (a lovely town) and got up Sunday morning for breakfast and church. There's not much I can pack the Little Man for a 2 day trip for breakfast. He had fruit. And the Hampton had more fruit but he was still hungry. So I let him have the left over french fries from the night before. I dumped them on a plate to microwave them and to what did my wondering eyes did appear? A stinking onion ring. It was all the way at the bottom of the container. BK fail. Is it that hard to get this right? NO! I'm just glad that he didn't get that container of large fries the night before or we would have had an emergency on RT. 77 S.
We ended up going to a small Catholic church for services. Everyone was so friendly. It was so small that they immediately knew that we were out of towners and took us in as one of their own. Thank you St. Benedict's for being so nice to us.
And we headed on the next leg of our trip. Another 5 fun filled travelling hours and we finally made our destination. We checked in, unloaded and hit the Piggly Wiggly. It's a nice store and their deli says "We carry Boars Head Gluten Free Lunch Meat" but the cutter isn't gluten free so that really doesn't help me. They did have Boars Head hot dogs that stated that they were gluten free so we got those and then things got dicey. It was hard to find things that we are used to so I really had to put on my label detective hat. Why did some Hormel bacon say "gluten free" on the back while others didn't even though there didn't look to be any "gluten" in the ingredients? Hillshire Farm lunch meat looked OK, but it wasn't something we used before and it wasn't listed in any of my gluten free product guides. No organic yogurt. No SoDelicous ice cream. But we managed. And it took a while but I found enough safe things for him to eat for the week and I called Hillshire Farm the next day to confirm that their lunch meat was indeed gluten free. You know what this experience taught me? I'm spoiled. My grocery has a whole gluten free/allergy friendly section. And they've started putting "gluten free" signs on safe products around the store. I had to shop at the Piggly Wiggly the way I USED to shop in the beginning of dealing with food allergies. After unloading all the groceries, the boys went to the pool, and Mama sat on the deck with a good book. And our condo neighbors were all gathering around the bottom of our condo and gazing out into the marsh behind us and pointing. Being nosy I had to see what was going on. Of course it was only this:

Our alligator friend. I only saw him that one time. It was like he came over to give me the stink eye and say "Stay out of my marsh" and just to let me know he was there.

View from the condo deck

Next day we headed to the beach and had our first allergy friendly dinner for the Little Man.