Gainesville

 
Jake made sure we were constantly entertained on our trip.

On Friday and Saturday, Bun, Kris, Jake, Sophie, and I went on a little trip to Gainesville. We started out early in the morning on Friday. Kris had told the kids, “The sky’s the limit!” So when we stopped at the Circle K on our way out of town, they got enormous icees in a rainbow of colors. I mean, these icees were so tall and frosty! They looked delicious.

The night before, Kris had had a poolside cookout with the kids to celebrate the beginning of their summer vacation. They made s’mores with Ghirardelli white chocolate. After gorging himself on s’mores, Jake decided he didn’t like “the butter” (the melted white chocolate).

“Jake’s crazy,” Kris said. “Those s’mores were awesome.”

In the car on the way to Gainesville, Kris started telling a story about how Jake had “almost burned the house down” during the cookout.

“No, Mommy!” Jake cried. “No flashbacks!”

“Why?” Kris teased. “Are you embarrassed?”

“No,” Jake said. “It’s just kind of boring.”

But Kris told the story anyway.

“I decided to take a shower while they finished toasting the marshmallows,” Kris said. “And then while I was in there, I started thinking, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I left Jake out there with a fire. What am I doing? I’m going to end up in jail.’” And sure enough, all of a sudden, she heard Jake and Sophie yelling and running around, so she ran out in a towel (“and it was a tiny towel,” Kris said). She was slipping on the wooden floors. “And then I discovered that Jake had dumped the entire bag of marshmallows into the grill, and they were all on fire,” Kris said. “And there was a stick with a marshmallow on it lying on the wooden deck, and that was on fire too. Jake had dropped it when he was running away. So we almost burned the house down. But Jake learned an important lesson about fire safety, right Jake?”

“Crap you, Mommy,” Jake said with a smile. I guess Jake knows he’ll get in trouble for saying the F word, so he just substitutes “crap.” Jake said “crap you” all weekend, always grinning. “Crap you, Sophie,” he’d say in a jolly way. He’s always trying to be hilarious.

It was a crazy ride down to Gainesville, of course. Bun was in the backseat, sandwiched between Sophie and Jake for the entire two and a half hours.

Jake was entertaining us by reading his Club Penguin mad libs: “Welcome to the Idiot Club!” he intoned in his happiest, loudest voice, confident we’d find his mad libs to be side-splitting. “Want to play hide and fart?”

He read us page after page. Sophie’s favorite featured a quiz for potential Club Penguin Secret Agents. “What would you do if you saw some penguins breaking the rules? A) Yell “Crap!” at them. B) Report them. C) Throw rocks at them. . . . Why do you want to be a Secret Agent? A) I want to poo and fart. B) I want a Barbie. C) I want to keep Club Penguin crappy. . . .”

Jake had some trouble reading his own terrible handwriting. He had particular difficulty distinguishing between the words “Barbie” and “Barney” (which are, apparently, extremely insulting terms in his mind): “I pooed on Barbie, no Barney, no Barbie!” he cried in his typical jubilant way. It was very important to get that right.

Jake seemed to regard his mad libs as literary masterpieces. Each word he’d supplied was sacred poetry. He let Sophie read a few pages to us, but he kept correcting her: “No, Sophie! Not a pooey belt! A poo belt!”

“But it’s supposed to be an adjective,” Sophie reasoned.

“No, Sophie! I don’t care! Read it how it says!”

Jake was not using an inside voice.

We played endless games as we drove. Near Madison, Sophie decided we should compose a funny letter together, each of us taking turns adding a word.

“Dear!” I yelled.

“Mr.!” Kris yelled.

“Joe!” Sophie yelled.

It was Bunny’s turn, but Bunny couldn’t think of anything. So Jake shouted, “Hancock!” He was so serious, but all the rest of us were dying laughing.

Bunny started telling us that her neighbor has been posting things on Facebook about her (Bunny’s) rooster. “She keeps writing things about ‘the rooster across the street,’” Bunny said.

Jake shouted, “Hey, Bunny! What’s a roosterant?! What’s a roosterant, Bunny? What are you talking about?”

“Um, I think I said rooster,” Bunny said.

“What’s a roosterant, Bunny?” Jake persisted.

“Um, I’m really not sure,” Bunny replied.

“Then why did you say it, Bunny?” Jake grinned.

“Um . . .” Bunny said.

Sophie wanted us to tell her about our favorite scary movies. I said one of my favorites was Jeepers Creepers.

“Is it bloody?” Jake asked.

“Um, no,” I said.

“Then it’s boring,” Jake pronounced.

He’s all big talk about loving horror movies, but, really, he is the biggest scaredy cat. He started telling us he’d seen Saw, but of course he was lying.

Well, finally we made it to Gainesville. At the very end, Jake’s Elmo doll was putting on shows courtesy of Sophie and Bunny had announced that she was going to throw up.

We were staying at the Hampton Inn Downtown, right next door to the Hippodrome. We found a parking spot on a charming brick street frilly with trees. Everything was so shady and lovely!

“Well,” Jake said cheerfully after he had climbed out of the car, “at least I didn’t forget how to walk!”

“There is that,” Kris agreed.

We headed across the street to the Hampton Inn, Bun and I oohing and ah-ing about how cute everything was.

Jake was really jazzed about our hotel. He was so excited to be on a trip. He started checking out the lobby and the gift shop. He wanted to use the luggage carts. He wanted to give everything a whirl.

Our room was so spacious and bright, huge and fancy, a suite. Immediately, Jake took off his shoes and started jumping from one sumptuous bed to the other. I used to do the exact same thing when I was a kid.

He was jumping and jumping, getting all red in the face. “Leslie, you should throw toilet paper at me,” he encouraged, panting. Because I did that once (well, a few times) at the beach house when he was really little, and he has always remembered it as the height of crazy fun.

So I did it again. I went and found a roll of toilet paper and threw it at him while he was leaping from bed to bed. I admit it. I tried to peg him and he tried to dodge the flying roll.

Kris was in the bathroom, but she was still yelling. “Jake!” she cried. “You’re going to crack your head open and then we’ll have to spend the whole day at the emergency room instead of going to the Butterfly Museum!” (We were headed for the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History that day.) Kris yelled, “Leslie will not throw toilet paper at you and endanger your life! So stop asking her!”

Sheepishly, I stopped throwing the toilet paper. I tried to get rid of the evidence.

Jake tried to convince me not to stop. He tried to keep the game going by hurling a full water bottle at me. It hit a wall and bounced across the room.

“Jake!” Kris screamed. She was out of the bathroom now.

Jake kept jumping and panting, his face red as a beet. He was grinning from ear to ear.

“Mommy,” he cried, “you should be glad! Because I am exercising!”

He kept telling us how hard his heart was beating. Then he jumped across to the other bed and landed on his head.

“Jake!” Kris cried. “Do you want to end up in a wheelchair?!”

Jake jumped off the bed and started rolling across the room, enjoying the wide open floor. He was rolling and rolling in an expression of sheer excitement and delight.

“Jake!” Kris yelled.

“You told me to stop jumping, Mommy,” he smiled.