Cocoa Beach - Our First Home Exchange

With our little guy just 5 weeks old, we had the crazy idea to go on a trip. We knew we had to keep it reasonable and stay on the continent, we also wanted to combine it with a visit with our dear friends Kristi and Vic Everingham, and last and most important, we wanted to do our first home exchange.

Kim and Kent are a couple who love Las Vegas and have homes in Florida and British Columbia. Their place in Florida is a condo on Cocoa beach and it was a great location for our first exchange. We had three bedrooms and their Mercury Mountaineer at our disposal. Even better, it was 20 minutes from our friends in Merritt Island.

We spent a week over Christmas playing in the sand, swimming in the pool, having daily visits to our friend's beautiful home on the inland waterway, and exploring local sites such as the Kennedy Space Center.  Highlights were the warm nights spent on our friends' patio eating everything from Monkfish to steaks.  There were lots of people around and lots of merriment. Harper had fun trying to keep up with the Everinghams 5 daughters and it was especially memorable when doing so, she fell off of a playset and came walking up with a face covered in dirt. Luckily she was not hurt.  Little Hudson did not fare so well.  After 6 days of a fever of 103, we ended up in the emergency room.  Urgent Care does not take a child under 6 months (something new we learned) so there were two scary instances in the ER where they attempted to get his fever under control.  Poor little guy was poked and prodded and to this day we did not receive a straight answer but he may have had a UTI on top of a cold and/or flu virus. We feel badly that he was this sick and we are extremely grateful that he made a full recovery and has never looked back.

Beach in December

Our Home away from Home

Kennedy Space Center

Face-Plant

Ugly Sweaters

First Smiles

Heading Home

Repurposing the Blog

It's been awhile and our excuse involves the very beings that inspired blogging in the first place.  Our two kiddos are now 4 and almost 2.  It proved to be a bit much to blog through those early sleepless years but our goal remains intact: documentation of life's adventures so we can look back with gratitude.
What now?
In October of 2013, after watching the movie, the Holiday, Kevin and I became enamored with a new way to approach our favorite hobby.  We are both proponents of the sharing economy and neither of us are especially protective of our material things. Given that some of these things have value, they are commodities in the sharing market.  Enter homeexchange.com; a website that facilitates the swapping of homes, cars, pet care, etc as a way of exploring the world through the eyes of a local.  It's simple and yet it's brilliant and it has afforded us the opportunity to visit many new places, stay in comfort with multiple bedrooms to accommodate our family, keep costs low by doing some cooking and eating at "home," and introduced us to many new friends who love home swapping too.
We are repurposing this blog as a way to remember each of our home exchanges. As of this date, we have 11 exchanges under our belt so we will start at the beginning and work to the present.