Florida Getaway!

When your daughter has been in isolation for 8+ months and she says she wants to go to Florida.....you figure it out and go to Florida! Last week I had planned to take all 3 kids to Clearwater Beach (Olivia’s choice) for 5 days by myself. Olivia was looking forward to enjoying the beach, ocean, family time, but most of all Clearwater Marine Aquarium! She’s been there once but couldn’t wait to go back!

As if we don’t have enough examples to share of God working in our lives, it was forecasted to rain the entire week we were gone in Indiana. With Tom being a farmer, that means the chances of him being able to get in the fields and plant we’re slim.....so he joined us! We knew if the weather changed at home he’d head back before us. It didn’t so we spent 5 wonderful, sunny days together!

We had to be VERY careful of Olivia being in the sun. Ideally, she should get zero sun! That’s hard to do on a beach vacation so she wore a hat, a rash guard shirt and LOTS of sunscreen! Luckily there were some lovely little blue huts at the beach we could rent so that helped keep Olivia out of the sun.

Besides spending time at the beach, Olivia went parasailing with her dad and sister. She also had a dolphin encounter with Nicholas the dolphin at the aquarium. I could go on and on about the week but to sum it up....family normalcy! We spent time with each other, away from reality and just got to be us! Olivia spent so much time just quietly taking it all in! She would stand in the ocean looking at the water for an hour by herself. When I asked her what she does all the time out there she said “I just think about how God created all of this!” Let’s all take a moment every day to acknowledge what God has created!

-Megan (Olivia’s mom)