March 2020 Part 3: Girls' Trip to Florida

On March 12, the day after we got back from Disneyland, the world started shutting down in earnest due to the spread of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). A few of my girlfriends had made plans to leave for Florida that night, and in between all of us packing at our separate house, we had lots of conversations back and forth about whether or not we were crazy to be traveling at this time. Should we cancel our trip? Should we just go for it? What if they shut down airports after we arrived? In the end, the siren call of a weekend without children and with a beach was too much to resist, and we headed to the airport for our red-eye flight to Orlando, thanks to Jen's buddy passes on Jet Blue. And since Serene's son Hunter was still too young to leave home, he got to be the one boy on our trip (below left to right: Scooby, Hunter, Serene, Jen, Me). 

Here I am, Tylenol PM in my system, ready to sleep the flight away. 

And I did. Mostly. 

After checking into our condo, we all took naps. When we woke up, we headed out to lunch

and while we were eating, we saw a pedicure place and decided that was a good idea. 

Jen thought it was really funny how many faces I made when I was getting my calluses removed. I'm so ticklish  so it was a bit agonizing for me. 

We naturally had to spend time at the pool, since they had one it was Florida. I tried to help Serene out by taking a turn holding Hunter. He didn't love that and still avoids me to this day. 

While we were hanging out at the pool, I got the word that the kids' school district was closing to in-person teaching and that school would move online. We heard about more and more things shutting down and canceling. 

We went to this amazing Mexican restaurant for dinner and came this close to Disney World. Given the impending pandemic, we decided not to go any closer. 

We discovered a couple of things about Scooby on this trip: she vocally enjoys good food and she LOVES tacos. I mean, who doesn't love tacos, but Scooby REALLY REALLY loves tacos. 

And with Fondue as a dessert option, how could we not?

I tried roasting the marshmallow on the little candle. It didn't work. 

The next day, we headed to Cocoa Beach! 

(Left to right: Jen, Serene, Scooby, Me with pre-ocean hair)

Me post ocean hair. 

We saw a dead jelly fish. 

All too soon, it was time to pack up. 

We found a bar/restaurant that looked good nearby and stopped for dinner. It was pretty crowded, but we were able to eat outside. They had a live band and the atmosphere was really fun and not to wild. One group of people arrived and didn't have quite enough room for their group and one of the ladies in the group made it very clear that we should surrender our table to them. I don't know if she thought we'd already eaten and were just selfishly hanging onto our table or what, but she kept huffing, giving us crusty looks and even leaning into Serene and Hunter a little bit. We laughed her antics off, and eventually she left. The food was delicious. 

After staying in Cocoa Beach til way past sunset, we finally made our way back to Orlando. 

The next day, we headed to the Orlando Temple grounds. Just for fun, here's my picture on my nice camera. 

And here's a picture from nearly the same spot and time from Jen's phone's camera of me taking a picture of Scooby. 

We had a little photoshoot. 

And our car served as a tripod for a group picture: 

After lunch at Yellow Dog Eats (which is AMAZING), we  went to a Walgreens and found some medicines to take back home (I had developed a cold by this point thanks to a week in Disneyland not getting enough sleep). By this point, all the toilet paper and soaps were cleaned out in every store we went to, which we'd heard was the same back home. Medicines were cleaned out at Walmart, which was unfortunate for me since I couldn't find any airborne. The country had started to panic, and we weren't exempt. That morning, a TSA worker at the Orlando Airport had been diagnosed with Covid. We went back to our condo, finished packing up, and went to the airport. It was the last day Disney World would be open, and the airport was insanely packed. 

This was the most strangely terrifying airport/flight experience of my life. We had no idea what this crazy Coronavirus was or what it would do, but everything we heard was bad. We didn't dare touch anything. We bathed our IDs in hand sanitizer after getting them back from the security guys. We wiped down Hunter's stroller with sanitizing wipes before we dared put him back in. We wiped every surface we touched. The security line was out of control, but thankfully, we were able to get Jen's TSA pre-check, which was a much shorter line. We barely made our flight, and our flight was packed. Luckily, we all made it on (Buddy passes=flying standby). I sat by two people I didn't know, and I tried very hard not to cough or blow my nose because I was worried they'd all come after me with pitch forks or something. It was a bad time to have a cold. 

They gave us cookies that were shaped like mustaches for the trip, in case you're wondering what I'm holding up under my nose. 

It was such a relief to get back to Jen's car at the airport and be home where my germs were my own. And that's when my quarantine officially started.