To the...

The Winns started their spring season off with a bang. They were lucky enough to spend a week with Jarom’s parents, brother, and another friend in a nice house on Kiawah Island, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The vacation started on Monday morning around 9:00 as they began the 7-hour drive down there. As any folks from the northeast know, there was quite the snowstorm on March 1, and they had to drive through the tail end of it as they crossed the Smoky Mountains through North Carolina. But as they passed the city of Bat Cave (yes, it’s real, and how cool would it be to grow up there?!) it began to warm up. By the time they made it to the Atlantic coast, temperatures were around 50, and would get up into the high 70’s as the week progressed.

Sunset from the dock

Kiawah Island is a beautiful and secluded island. It is full of big trees with Spanish moss hanging from the branches, wonderfully manicured golf courses, quaint little shops and waterways everywhere. They stayed in a lovely home with a pool that was supposed to be heated (it wasn’t), a private dock, and access to a plethora of bike trails. Jarom’s immediate goal upon arrival was to befriend an alligator, and it didn’t take him much time. Steve Irwin would seriously be in heaven there. There were gators of all sizes pretty much everywhere you looked, up to about 12 feet long. He got within a few feet of them several times, once nearly stepping on a 5 or 6 footer and scaring the bejeepers out of both himself and the animal. Alixa spent many a childhood summer on Hilton Head Island, which is just a few clicks south and strikingly similar, so she felt right at home and had a blast. It was quite nice to be in such a pleasant environment with some family that they don’t get to see as often as they would like.

What kind of mother would let her children play around next to that monster?

As you might expect, Jarom took advantage of the opportunity to play a few rounds of golf with his dad, brother, and Mike Slaugh. The weather was nice and the golf was free (at least free to Jarom—He says thanks, Bruce), so the fact that he won both games was simply a bonus. I think that this is the first time that Jarom has beaten his dad at golf, which brought back memories of when he first started to beat him at basketball…at about age 12. After that they didn’t play hoops together nearly as much. Hopefully this doesn’t have a similar effect on their golfing frequency.

It must be tough to be a Charleston police officer.

As Jason said, "You can't spell segway without a g-a-y."

Another friendly Kiawah native

On Saturday, the weather was the best it had been all week, so they rented some kayaks to go play in the river. They were two person boats, so in the afternoon Jarom went out with Annie and Juliet and they were lucky enough to see a little pod of dolphins, two adults and two little ones. The fish seemed mildly curious about the kayak, and would let them get within about 20 feet before vanishing beneath the surface and reappearing 100 feet away. Jarom would paddle over to them again, and the process was repeated 3 or 4 times until he started to get tired and turned back to shore. Juliet was thrilled to see the baleine (that’s French for whale. Her parents think it’s cool to have a bilingual 18 month old, but they can’t even teach her to correctly identify an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin by its dorsal fin? C’mon people.)

The deer have to sprint across the roads in SC

Seriously, amazing sunsets

Unfortunately, Alixa did not get to ride the kayaks because she got herself sick on Friday afternoon. It seems to have been a combination of some sun stroke (she doesn’t believe in proper hydration) and a flu-like bug. She was bed ridden for much of Saturday, but the fun didn’t really start until the ride back to Knoxville. On Sunday Jarom and Lix were driving about 50 miles past Charleston [Jesse, stop reading here] when she started to throw up in the middle of her coughing. At first she kept it on the blanket that she was covered with, but there was more coming up. Trying to keep it from becoming too messy, she rolled down the window to hurl outside. Unfortunately they were on the freeway doing about 70. If any of you have ever spit into the wind, you can visualize what happened next. As Jarom slows down and tries to get off the road without causing an accident, he can feel little bits of wetness hitting his arm. So of course the rest of the car interior is receiving the same treatment. After coming to a stop, the damage was pretty severe. Alixa was covered, there were bits all over the inside of the car, and the entire right side of the Camry was plastered. Jarom literally could not see out of the window. They stopped at a hotel and a gas station for a clothes change and some paper towels and cleaner, and then kept on truckin’ to get home as soon as possible. They arrived at 5:30 and went straight to a walk-in clinic, which was closed. So it was off to the ER, where they spent the next 6 hours. Lix got an IV, some meds for her nausea and fever, and negative tests for the flu and strep, which was good news. As a result her vacation got extended a little bit, getting a day off on Monday and only going in for a few hours on Tuesday. She seems to be coming out of it, which is good. Amazingly, Jarom has managed to avoid catching whatever it was, knock on wood. He has tried to be supportive and help her get better. He does say that the highway puke event was possibly the most disgusting thing he has ever experienced. Even so, they had a good vacation and are glad that Bruce and Nancy invited them down.

Alixa wanted to send a shout out to her buddy Mandy Jo with her pants. We miss you, Carters.