We learned last summer that my daughter-in-law was expecting another baby with our son, who is currently stationed at Fort Benning. They already have an older child, so we said we would come down and help them out when the time came. We had planned to leave on March 14th, but life threw us one of those curves. We had a couple of false alarms already, but last week Janet began showing possible signs of preclamsia, which she had with the first pregnancy. Worried that the baby would have to come out sooner rather than later, we moved everything up a week and rushed down to a campground not far from their home.

We are still in a holding pattern at the current moment. Tomorrow is another blood pressure check, so we will see what comes of that.

Our trip down was fairly uneventful, aside from the things we realized we had forgotten. When you go from having 10 days before you leave to just 3, things are rushed, and there were a number of things that I intended to put in the camper that never made it. One of the major things for my husband and me was coffee creamer. We need our coffee every morning, and since I’m in pre-diabetes, I watch my sugar. We get sugar-free coffee creamer, and that’s sweet enough for both of us. We had a full one in the fridge at home that was meant to go in the camper, but is still in the fridge at home, along with frozen hamburger patties. We had to improvise in the mornings. I had bought a quart of milk, but there wasn’t anything to sweeten the coffee with until I had the brainstorm of using maple syrup. I have to say it tasted pretty good!

We arrived at this campground last night and went to Walmart this morning to get a number of things we forgot. The campground is Cedar Trail RV Park in Fort Mitchell, Alabama. The price is right since we’re staying nearly a month, and the cost was less than $600. However, this really is a place to just park your camper. They have full hookups, but there are no bathhouses or laundry facilities. Normally, I prefer to shower in the bathhouse rather than use the small one in the camper. We’ll be cleaning out the shower today so we can use it. We can go to my son’s house to do laundry while we’re here.

I visited them over the summer, so I know a few places we can visit when we have time. The National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning is an excellent museum to visit. Jimmy Carter’s birthplace and hometown isn’t that far away either. I’ll make posts about the various places we visit while we’re here.

After Easter, the plan is to head further south. Every other year, we use our Disney Vacation Club points to rent a 3-bedroom villa and have all of the family together for a vacation. We’d been planning that for April, but with a new baby, we had to push that back to August. Me in Florida in August is not going to go so well, which is fine because Nana can watch the baby in a nice, air-conditioned bar while everyone else goes on rides. We’re still going to do our Disney camping in April, though. We’ll spend about 3 weeks at Fort Wilderness and visit Disney, Sea World, and Universal Parks while we’re there. This is sort of a warm-up for next January, when we will snowbird in Central Florida for 3 months.

I’ll be making travel posts over the next 6-8 weeks, so be ready for them!