Disaster

The Ideas

At the restaurant, the theme was fish, of course. We ate fish. Sat at a fish table. Heck, the restaurant even SMELLED like dead fish. I just wanted to get out of there within the first 5 minutes we were there. Yet, we ended up eating blue gill with assorted carrots and other vegetables around it. It was surprisingly good.

When the meal was over we headed over to the bay to look at the fish. Matthew looked over the railing at the multi colored wrigglers and could've stayed there for hours. We'd already been there for 45 minutes when finally they started closing some of the attractions. Luckily, this was one of them. We were planning on swimming at 7, so we had 30 minutes to get our swimsuits on and head down to one of the neon pools.

I hurried back to my hotel room and threw open my suitcase. Right on top of the pile of clothes was my turquoise swimsuit. It was a tankini. Bikinis made me feel way too exposed. And one pieces just made my skin squish up against the rest of my body. I slipped it on and placed my swim cover up on over the turquoise suit. I grabbed Jonathan off of the bed wear he was applying layer after layer of sunscreen in his neon green swim shorts. The girls had already headed down to the pool wearing their unicorn covered bikins. I never lost them when they wore those swimsuits. Jackson was waiting with Matthew outside their room adjusting his Captain America swim trunks while Matthew sat on the ground playing with a mound of his dinosaurs. Jackson took off as soon as he saw us coming. Matthew on the other hand freaked out because he was so excited to see his mom and dad again. He was such a cutie. We grabbed him and his bag full if dinos and walked to the pool.

The pool was aglow with the most neon lights you would ever see in your lifetime. Lights were strung from palm tree to palm tree and neon electronic flowers floated on the water. Black lights hung from rafters and all the tourists wearing white we're the brightest things of all.

I spotted Tessa and Tiffany lying on two chairs and Jackson setting one up beside them. That made things a lot easier. Matthew ran over to the small shallow kiddie pool and started throwing all his dinosaurs in one by one. Jonathan and I set up some chairs by the girls and made Jackson keep an eye on Matthew. He started to argue, but I forced him to do it anyways.

I jumped into the pool and stared breathlessly at the floating lights. They were so beautiful and designed so carefully that you couldn't stop looking at them for decades. I lay out on my purple float gazing upon the flowers wandering around me. My little daydream was just getting starts when, of course, one of my children called upon me.

"Mom?" Yells Tessa.

"What is it?" I yell back.

"Can I have 5 dollars?"

I should've see it coming.

I got off my float and reached into my purse.

"Um, I only have a ten!"

"That's okay, we can use that too!" Tiffany said.

"What're you even going to buy?" I asked them.

"Zebra print sunglasses. And snow cones."

"First of all, I just bought you sunglasses last week, and second, you already had snow cones earlier today when we got on the ship, so no."

I placed the ten dollar bill back in my bag and zipped it shut.

"But mom!" they whined.

I ignored them.

We had fun swimming the rest of the night and finally went back for hotel room time like Jackson wanted.