What I did on my summer vacation, Part 5

If this vacation has been one thing, it has been unpredictable.

We came down here without any clear schedule of events, no agenda other than rest and reconnect. Today was supposed to be the day we went to the Space Center, but because of the sunburn, that didn't happen. Neither did the night shark fishing or the guest appearance in the band for Bruce. And amazingly, no one is really disappointed.

But it took and act of God for all of us to really enjoy our circumstances corporately. We have all had fun at one time or another, all sacrificing in some way for the happiness of other family members, which is really cool. But nothing has really brought us all together in total enjoyment of the moment until the storms tonight!

All of us love thunderstorms and 3 of them converged right in front of the condo out on the ocean. There was so much lightning, we couldn't take it all in. For about 30 minutes we were seeing 4 or 5 cloud to ground or water strikes every 2 seconds. It was incredible! I am not sure about the wisdom of leaning on a metal railing on the 4th floor balcony in an electrical storm... but we survived and were all amazed and delighted with God's amazing handiwork in this set of storms. We all agreed that the entire trip was worth it just to see this intense a storm with no trees blocking the view and relative safety outside to watch it.

At one point we heard a terrible crashing noise from out front of the condo. The hallway is open air and the wind was whipping through it like a hurricane! Bruce ran out to see what had happened and if anyone needed help. He saw the security guy running around and it took them a few minutes to figure out that it had been the cover of one of the fire extinguishers that had been ripped off by the wind and shattered against one of the railings. This was an intense storm!

Amber kept trying to catch lightning with the camera but she seemed to be always facing the wrong direction for some of the longer lasting strikes. So she put the camera away and just watched with us. This was better than any fireworks we have ever seen!

We were very grateful that we decided not to do the night fishing trip tonight and will check the weather very carefully before deciding if we will attempt it tomorrow night. We are hoping Amber's legs will feel good enough to try the Space Center tomorrow, but we are mostly concerned about how she will be feeling for saturday when we drive home. I don't know of anything else to do to make the sunburn heal faster. We are praying and she is already using aloe and vitamin E gell to help with the pain and the healing. Other than those things, it just takes time.

Thunder is still rolling. What a nice sound to fall asleep to.