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Two girls in a beach-bound Buick

 

(Our vacation story continues…)

This is where it all began.

The city where a boy fell in love with a girl. And the girl fell in love with a boy. They both bled purple and gold, they had a little tiger of their own, and they lived happily ever after.

Baton Rouge is where the “us” all started. Without LSU, there’d be no Princess Cupcake. With good reason, I was determined for her to seize the opportunity of her first campus experience as we passed through on our way to Gulf Shores. Besides, it was 7 hours into our girls’ trip and, as comfy as our on-loan Buick Encore was, we were both desperate for a good leg stretch.

As we crested over the I-10 bridge, I caught sight of Tiger Stadium in the distance and felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. I could almost hear the band playing the LSU rally song in my beloved Death Valley.

I desperately wanted the Cupcake to feel the same butterflies of excitement. Surely it would be hereditary, right? It was my compelling mission that this, her inaugural visit to LSU, was to leave an indelible mark on her heart.

We parked at Tiger Stadium, walked over to Mike the Tiger’s habitat, cruised through campus, saw the new digital marketing complex (awesome, makes me proud), and like a homing pigeon went back to my favorite Coffee Call for a Café Au Lait and beignet fix for the rest of the journey.

 

Turns out, one of us (me) was WAAAAAYYYYY more excited about this interstate detour than the other. Aside of the shopping in the TAF gift shop for pajamas and a new cheerleading uniform and seeing a real live tiger up close, she was totally unimpressed with LSU. Sadly, I was more animated about the gourmet hot dog I purchased at the gas station for Cupcake’s dinner than she was with my impromptu campus tour. It was stiff competition from the Barbie movie collection that she brought with her.

So we moved on. Two girls in a beach-bound Buick leaving Baton Rouge. “Almost there” with only 3ish hours left.

By the time we got to Hwy 59 South into Foley and Gulf Shores, the official home stretch, I could no longer feel my backside . Brilliantly, I laughed at the sticky summer temperature outside my Encore cocoon and cranked up my heated seat. Let me tell you, this Buick knows how to fix an achy you-know-what, I don’t care what month it is.

Just as I was starting to feel better, the pitifulest moaning started. “Mooooommmmmyyyyyy my BOTTOM hurts!” I didn’t dare tell her how I had a toasty rear-end since there’s no option for heated booster seats for little travelers — honestly that would just be mean.

And for the record, why the heck was she even awake? It was almost 11 p.m., 2.5 hours past her bedtime and no nap all day. I had been counting on her taking at least a 150 mile nap at some point in this journey. The closer we got, the more traffic lights we hit, the more she was tortured and the louder she got, whining and straining against the seatbelt to stretch as far away from her booster seat as her safety belt would allow.

What truly felt like an eternity later, we finally pulled into the Beach Club and she was so done with the car ride.

All the road weariness was forgotten the moment she threw open the door to the condo. She wasn’t the least bit worried about forgetting blankie, her numb bum, and heavens knows, not her bedtime. She ran around the condo from room to room, saying, “MOMMY! I’ve always wanted a house like this! It’s a dream come true!” Note: she couldn’t even see the beach. It was pitch black outside.

I was happy to have arrived too, maybe not as happy as she was, but I’ll admit to feeling smug that I miraculously got all of our luggage up to the condo in one trip.

It started to sink in. It was a dream come true. A vacation with just my little munchkin – oh, the momeries we would make. As thrilled as I was to be there with her, all I secretly wanted at that moment was a fantastic REM sleep for at least the equivalent of the 10.5 hour drive. But the joy on her very not tired face was worth every single one of the 658 miles. So what if my hopes for her to have LSU love at first sight didn’t quite pan out? The hubs and I met in Baton Rouge and it’s part of the fabric that weaves us together as a family – and one day that will mean more to her than Barbie movies in the back seat of a Buick ever will.

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