Spring break is over

We got home Tuesday late night (really Wednesday morning) at 1 Am. Another 19 hour drive. Well, 18 1/2 to be exact. South Padre Island was fun. LOTS of crazy Spring breakers.... and cops! The weather was nice for the most part. There were a few cool or rainy days. However, back at our house we got somewhere around 8 inches of snow. I'll take a cooler day at the beach over snow any Spring break day!

On our way there Pete realized he forgot his wallet at home... 4 hours into our drive. He actually thought about going back for it. NO! No way was I going to turn around and go back another 4 hours to get his wallet!! Luckily, our neighbor is awesome and was willing to go fetch it out of Pete's pant pocket at our house. She was watching our cat and collecting our mail so she had the key. We told her to overnight it to S Padre. Pete's parents are there for 3 months in the winter so we gave her that address.

She got to Fedex (Kinkos) late so it would not go out that day. That was Thursday evening. It would go out Friday. BUT since S Padre is a smaller island Fedex does not deliver there on Saturdays. Overnight means we would be getting it Monday. That was $48. OR we could send it 2 days and get it Tuesday for only $23. We chose to save the extra $25 and picked Tuesday. It was there before 9 am Tuesday morning.

We stayed in my in-laws condo. They stay in an RV at an RV park on the beach. The condo was just bought last Spring/Summer. They decked it out last Summer. It is very nice and we loved staying in it. It is 3 bedrooms and sleeps 8 people. The kitchen is probably nicer than ours. It is smaller but has about twice the cabinet space as ours. It has a dishwasher and a fully stocked kitchen (as in, any gadget you may think you need is there!).

The condo has a washer and dryer (that was used every day by me) and LCD TV's in every bedroom plus the living room. If you are thinking of going to S Padre Island and need a place to stay, let me know... I can recommend a great place! Plus... it is walking distance to the beach. extra nice!

While on the Island we did not let the kids watch TV in the car. I know, surely that is child abuse, right?! We told them they could watch out the windows for entertainment. There was plenty of it out there. We go to leave Tuesday morning and the sound on the DVD player is not working. Our van is a conversion van so it has a switch for the back speakers. They can play the radio or the DVD sound. (I never have figured out how to get the back radio to work... there is a front and a back radio. But the switch is for the front radio or the DVD player). Anyway, I played around with it, unscrewed it, cleaned it, anything I could while riding down the interstate. The switch seemed to be stuck on the front radio. Either way it was pushed the sound coming through the speakers never changed, it was the radio from up front. So the DVD worked but had no sound. Then I realized at least the headphone jacks worked with it. I had 3 pairs of headphones in the car. So if the kids wanted to LISTEN to the DVD being played they had to wear headphones. It was still a long drive home! I'm sure the switch being broken has nothing to do with the fact that it had super sandy crocs placed on top of it. Sand was ALL over it. HA!

Today I have gone to 3 places to find and get a replacement switch. I figured the entire unit would need to be replaced. But luckily, the switch can be removed and replaced just by itself. The bad news, so far, nobody has the switch. NAPA (not sure if that is the correct spelling) is ordering one that looks like mine but we'll see if it fits when they get it in tomorrow. Fingers crossed it works. If not, we may have to get the whole thing rewired and I'm sure that would cost a small fortune.

Overall, Spring break was great. We are debating about going again next year though. The traffic is so bad during the official Spring break week. The RV and condo is only 3 miles apart. It would take us roughly 20 minutes to drive ONE way because of the traffic and Spring breakers who, obviously, are invincible and walk right out in front of the cars. One night it took us roughly 1 hour to drive 3 miles. 1 hour!! crazy! And don't even thing about crossing over the causeway and coming back late afternoon time. That traffic looked even more crazy.