Roads less traveled...sometimes there's a reason

Saturday we all jumped in some little boats and headed out to Secret Beach to celebrate William turning 8. Ralna called me on Friday afternoon to see if I would be able to make cakes for the party. She pretty much said I could make them look like anything I wanted. As I started looking at ideas, I realized this was the first kid cake I've made. I was really stressed about it! Below are some pictures of the cakes. I should have taken pictures before we got to the beach because the icing was already melting in these pictures. The alligator's fingernails were falling off and some of the icing on his tail was sliding down. William was excited about his cakes, so I was very glad! No one had been to SB since the hurricane. When we got there we saw that over half the beach was gone and there was barely any beach left! We had to put all our belongings (including the food) up on rocks. Ralna hung a "Happy Birthday" sign on some rocks and people started moving branches to build a place to cook hot dogs. The kids were running around, swimming, snorkeling, hunting for hermit crabs (I think Sophia had about 30 in her bucket), throwing sand at each other, and just basically being kids. Ralna kept commenting on how many things had gone wrong and how at home she would have made sure everything was perfect. Then we stepped back and looked at the kids and realized they were as happy as could be. They could have cared less that half the beach was gone, there were no tables or chairs or presents, or that we were eating hot dogs with regular bread because they don't sell hot dog buns here. They had a blast! Living here has helped us to just let things go and not make such a huge deal about everything. (Ex. as we were leaving the beach Ralna didn't want to give me my cake pans back dirty, so she washed them out in the ocean) Shorty (the guy with the little boat) came back to get a small group of us to take us back to PBH. We all jumped on the little boat and made it about 30 feet from land when the boat died. He tried and tried (and tried) to fix it and finally he had to paddle us back to SB and we waited for another boat to arrive. When we got back to PBH I remembered that I had ridden with Ralna and that our car was at school. Katy said we could walk all the way down the beach to the steps that led to campus. I had never done this before, but it sounded like a plan. As we walked further we noticed that the hurricane had taken away a lot of this beach, too. We were walking on piles of rocks, rather than a beach. We got to a point where we had to start crawling under tree branches. Katy would say "oh man, I'm stuck" and I would look up and see that her cover-up was tangled in some branches. The rocks started getting very slippery b/c they had moss on them so we decided it would be easier to walk in the water (still on rocks). The water came about to my knees, so I just pulled my dress up (my swimsuit was under it), held my bag high, and carefully started walking in the water. I stepped on what I thought was a rock, but now think was a crab. I slipped and immediately felt a strong pinch on my ankle. OWWWWWW!!! I was pinched by a crab! So now I was hot, tired, sweaty, wet, and my ankle was twisted and pinched (I twisted it when I slipped). Nothing to do but just keep walking. Katy and I continued slipping and sliding and both ended up falling in the water. My bag went halfway in with me...cell phone, camera, wallet, and all. Ugh! We FINALLY made it to the stairs that led to campus. We were panting like 2 exhausted dogs. Walking through campus to get to the parking lot I felt like everyone was looking at me. If I looked half as bad as I felt, then it wasn't pretty! My ankle has been pretty tender the past few days, but it's fine. The whole adventure reminded me of a similar story that happened when I was 13. My friend Laura and I were on a Sunday afternoon walk and I suddenly needed to go to the bathroom. Rather than turning around and going home, we decided to cut through a field and save a lot of time. The field ended up being the thorniest patch you can imagine. We managed to get just far enough into the field to get completely, totally, 100% stuck. We couldn't take one step forward or backwards. Every inch of our bodies was stuck with thorns - from our hair, to our clothes, to our socks, to our shoe laces. Our skin had tiny red blood marks from all the pokes we'd received. We went through moments of panic and crying to hysterical laughter. Thank goodness for cell phones because without one they probably would have found us days later. I called Lee Taylor (the field was in between his street and mine) and he jumped on his bike (too young to drive)! and rushed to our rescue with bush clippers. I kind of see a pattern here...my determination to keep going and not turn back has gotten me into some pretty sticky situations!