My mom doesn't commit to anything until the last minute. Toward the end of last week, she decided we would leave for Biloxi on Friday evening for the summer convention! My daddy was planning to make the trip with us. His mission for the trip was to try to find some shrimp to buy and bring back to cook at the fair next week. This would obviously leave him a lot of free time to entertain himself while we were at convention.
I got off at 4:00 on Friday afternoon to go home and pack my stuff up. Mama had texted me a few times to see when I would be ready, so I tried not to waste too much time getting my things together. Austin had gotten home a little early to cut the grass and get his hair cut. Without much persuading, he agreed to make the trip with us within minutes of me leaving the house. This made me a super happy wife. By the way, it still feels super weird to say wife and husband!! And sometimes when I call myself Lacy Byrd- that's just really weird too!
We got to the McMurry residence around 5:30 or so, and Mama Jim and Daddy Jim were there. We visited for a little bit, looked at mom's newly laid bedroom floor and started to put our stuff in the Expedition. Around 6:15 or so, we were all in the vehicle and finally ready to go. Daddy was driving. He went to crank the vehicle, and there were no keys. Mom ran back inside to see if she could find them. About thirty minutes in, I realized the keys were really nowhere to be found. We ransacked the house and Austin even went to Mama Jim's house to see if she happened to leave with them! (She wouldn't answer her phone.)
After about an hour of looking, we gave up and moved all of our luggage to daddy's vehicle.
Let me also add that this set of keys mom lost was her extra set. The original set got lost during the chaos of dance recital. They're probably in a box somewhere at the studio, because during recital- everything is in a box. The problem was no longer how we were going to get to Biloxi, but rather the fact that she had NO keys to her vehicle.
Around 7:30, we gave up looking and everybody got in the truck except daddy. When he was walking to the driver's side, about to open his door to the truck, he looked down to find the keys laying behind a saw on the carport. WHAT the WHAT. Nobody has any idea how they got there. Daddy thinks maybe he put them in the window seal and a cat knocked them onto the ground behind the saw. So, he blamed it on one of the 25 cats that reside at the McMurry residence. (If anyone is looking for a cat- they have a one stop shop. Various ages and colors available) We moved our stuff back to the Expedition and got on the road.We stopped for "supper" in Meridian at Burger King and arrived in Ocean Springs at around 11:30pm. We had not booked a place to stay for the night. We thought we would just stay at the first decent place we saw. BIG mistake. Everything in Ocean Springs was booked... except a Ramada Inn that looked like it hadn't had a renovation in some 35 years. For a whopping $70, we got the only room left in Ocean Springs. I am super glad Austin and Daddy were with us, because we otherwise would have felt unsafe! After we got settled down and I was starting to doze off, I heard daddy mumble, "these pillows aren't worth a crap."
I don't recall ever staying in a room so outdated. Mom said I have always been on the upper side of things, but that was bad. Like really bad. We got up early enough Saturday morning to make it to the convention center in Biloxi at 9:00am. The guys goal for the day was to find us ANYwhere else to stay Saturday night. They came and got us for lunch at 12:00, and all they had found was one room with two queen beds for $180 at something like the Hampton. Daddy said that was too much, but I think at this point he was wishing he had taken it. I called around to all of the cool places. I was all about staying at the Hard Rock, the Beau Rivage or the new Margaritaville. No luck there. I called and found a place in Gulfport that had one room available. After we ate at Cane's, we got dropped back off at convention and the guys headed to Gulfport to check the place out. An hour later they arrived and decided it was way too far. They came back to get us from convention at 3:00 when we were done and took us to the Super 8!! It was even worse than the Ramada. There were dirty towels behind the bathroom door, sand in the tub and the floor near the bathroom was wet. We found out why whenever I used the sink and water started to drip on my feet.
We got dressed and went to the outlet mall in Gulfport to shop for daddy, per my mom's request. I took a picture of them shopping, which was quite comical in itself.
Mom's response to my picture taking was- "Lacy. I really do not want to make your blog." Are you kidding me? You're my mom. You'll make the blog. They had a Disney store at the outlet and I could feel the magic the minute I stepped in it!! OMG- I loveeee a Disney store.
I didn't buy a thing, but I could've hung out there all night. Austin's response to the Disney store was to take a picture of a stuffed Mickey on his snapchat and add a gun to his head.... So there's that.
After shopping, we made our way back to the coastline to eat at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co. We ate our fair share of seafood and mom and I shared a yummy dessert.
We got back to the room around 10:00, got in our not so comfortable beds and rested up for day two of convention.When we got picked up after convention was over, the vehicle was starting to smell like the raw shrimp they had picked up on Saturday, and I spent a lot of the time on the way home like this...
It was gross, and we opened the rear windows to try to let some of the smell out. Although the picture below has Qdoba in the background, we stopped to eat at Applebee's in Hattiesburg to round out an eventful weekend of family fun and dancing!
When we got home, we loved on our fur babies, watered the plants and found ourselves super grateful for our home and especially our bed.
On a side note, we really enjoyed convention and look forward to using some of the new things we learned. Also, I am sore from the minimal dancing I participated in. #grandmastatus
Great story, you write really well.
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