Marco Island-2011

We just got back from a week in Marco Island, FL. We rented a house that we found on vrbo.com and it worked out great for us. I’m feeling fairly disorganized, so I’m just going to type and see where this goes.

First off, it’s a long haul. The whole family went and I didn’t feel like shelling out $1500-$2000 for airfare. Add on that we still would need a car or van to get from any airport to Marco as the closest airport is almost 50 miles away. The drive is about 1400 miles and took us 22 hours to complete over 2 days. It took Zach about 30 miles to ask if we were there yet. At one point coming home he started in and I answered him about 5 times that we weren’t almost home. Then I decided to ignore him and I counted how many times asked before getting tired of it. 45. That’s how many consecutive “Are we there yet's?” he asked. Then he changed the subject for 15 seconds and started in again. Damn he’s persistent. It was becoming obvious that the subtle parenting wasn’t going to work, so I took the direct approach. I told him he’d get a spanking if he didn’t quit asking. I didn’t want to have to spank him for something so stupid, but he was driving me crazy. Thankfully for both of us, he got the message. We chose Marco for a vacation largely because our friends have a timeshare there. We could have rented a condo in the same complex as them for about $2500/wk, instead we opted for the house at a cost of $700/wk. They were on the beach and could watch the sunset every night. Not that you can put a price on sunsets, but for me I know the price is less than $1800. And quite honestly, once you’ve seen one sunset over the gulf, you’ve seen them all. Next up-jet skiing.
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Addiction

I haven’t blogged for awhile because I’m dealing with a very serious addiction in my home. I didn’t realize how serious it was until I did an intervention about a month ago.
It was a Saturday morning and the house was empty except for my four-year-old and me. We were playing Lego Star Wars and I decided to take Zach to the raptor center (birds, not dinosaurs). It’s a good way for me to kill an hour with the kids while getting them out of the house. Plus Zach needed some time away from the Wii. Zach had no idea what we were going to see, so I explained we’ll see eagles, owls and hawks. Here’s the ensuing conversation:
Zach: Ewoks?
Me: Hawks. Not Ewoks.
Zach: What about the Ewoks?
Me: There are no Ewoks. Only hawks.
I thought I had conveyed the situation until we got to the raptor center. We were walking around and Zach kept asking about the Ewoks.
Zach: Where are the Ewoks?
Me: There are no Ewoks.
Zach: But you said there would be Ewoks here.
Me: There are no Ewoks.
Zach: Why aren’t there any Ewoks here?
Me: Because there aren’t any Ewoks. They aren’t real.
Zach: But you said there would be Ewoks here.
As you can see, this is a fairly serious issue. Zach is totally addicted to anything related to Star Wars. He plays Star Wars on the Wii for about an hour per day to feed the addiction. He has watched all 6 of the movies several times and watches the clone wars cartoon religiously. We are at the end of a weeklong vacation and Zach hasn’t had too many withdrawal issues, but we’ll see how he handles his addiction once he gets in contact with it again.
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