Remember how I said that our friends invited us to go to Florida with them? We met David at the Parking Spot near the airport and handed off our kids. We gave lots of hugs and kisses and some last minute pleas to be helpful, caught our shuttle, went through security quickly, thanks to TSA Precheck, and then waited for our plane to head out.
Meanwhile, our kids got busy enjoying all the new things at Taryn's house.
We were so excited to be going somewhere warm, even if it meant wearing a mask on our flight across the country.
Our flight got a little delayed out of Dallas, but we weren't stressed. We figured Dustin and Serene would have our rental car waiting for us by the time we got off our plane in Fort Meyers.
Nope. There were no cars to be had. We ended up waiting an hour or two for our car, so it was 2 a.m. before we left the airport. I had flashbacks to our Orlando trip last year, but the difference was that we didn't have to try to keep tired children happy. We had a great time sitting in the rental car lobby laughing and talking with some of our best friends. We finally got our car and headed to our rental house. We slept in.
I have a feeling this little person did not.
Dustin and Serene were up and exploring way before we were, but we finally got up and headed to go get brunch at a nearby restaurant. We sat at the common table and had an amazing spread.
This older gentleman sat a few chairs down from us, and he was quite the talker and fairly inappropriate. He told us that he'd heard on NPR that women shouldn't drink alcohol unless they were on birth control and then proceeded to ask me if I was on birth control! I was quite surprised by that one and probably said something about how I don't drink alcohol so it didn't matter. He told us that he didn't own socks or a jacket, so it it was cold enough to require them, he just stayed home. He commented on the fact that we were eating breakfast at lunch time and made some judgmental comment about us sleeping in really late, to which I responded that we just flew in late last night and were still on Utah time, he asked if we were Mormons. When we said that yes, we were indeed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he said "I figured. There are a lot of you in Utah." I said, "Well, that's because they drove us out of every where else back in the day." We cracked up over this conversation the rest of the weekend. He was a pleasant person, if a little more blunt than the average.
Finally, we made it to the beach (Barefoot Beach)
The gulf was SO beautiful and calm. How I missed these white sandy beaches. It had been YEARS since we went to the gulf side.
Our rental home supplied us with an umbrella, chairs, and a cart to haul it all. It was awesome!
And we braved the water that was still a little chilly for the 80 degree weather, but once we got used to it, it was quite pleasant.
We ate at an Indian restaurant, and it was SO good!!!
The next day, Serene and Dustin beat us out the door again. They drove the car to the beach, and we took an Uber to meet them a little bit later. We found this shop called "Master Bait and Tackle" and decided it was not the name we would have picked for a bait shop.
Our Uber driver dropped us off at the gate, and we began our trek to go meet Serene and Dustin. We saw this turtle on our way, and it made me so happy!
The turtle was the highlight until we saw this dolphin. Serene and I ran along the beach, chasing the dolphin who was hanging out so close to the shore. It even did some big jumps for us. It was magical!
We spent the day soaking up the sun
and playing in the gulf. We found some really cool shells.
Meanwhile, the kids enjoyed the fresh toys at Taryn's house.
We had a lot of fun with the sea shells.
There was a little snack stand at this particular beach, so that's where we got lunch. The woman who took our order took meticulous notes on everything about what we wanted on our sandwiches, so it was really funny when she got every single order wrong. Each one of us had to take our sandwich back to request the missing veggies, and when they came back wrong again, we just had to laugh it off because she gave us pickles instead of cucumbers, and jalepenos instead of green bell peppers. Bless her heart.
We should have just tried the fish like this bird. Just kidding. That's crazy. Fish is/are gross.
We waded out into the water again, and we spent hours digging out shells from the sand beneath our feet. We used out toes to keep our heads above water. It was glorious.
The funny thing about these Bonita Springs beaches was that there weren't very many children. It was mostly senior citizens. We had to laugh that as the sun started going down, instead of teenagers or college students showing up for a bonfire, a whole group of gray and white haired people showed up, put their beach chairs in a semi-circle much like I would expect the former crowd to do. We have new life goals now.
We were among the youngest hanging out at the beach that weekend.
We stayed until dark, enjoying this beautiful sunset.
And had more fun with all our cool shells.
Seriously though, we had to cull the lot of shells before leaving because we found SO many good ones, mostly conch shells.
We had a feast with our leftover Indian food and leftover groceries. All too soon, we were packing up and preparing for departure. We left really early the next morning to catch our flight. Farewell, awesome vacation house!
We grabbed breakfast and then Dustin and Serene dropped us off at the airport. Dustin and Serene stayed an extra day, but we needed to be back home for things happening the next day.
While we were on the plane heading home, Taryn made mini waffles for our kids (which is kind of a big deal because Taryn hates waffles).
We had a layover in Dallas again, and after getting lunch in the airport, we headed back home.
Our kids went to church with Taryn's family, and we met up with Taryn near Brigham City to collect our kids later that evening feeling refreshed from our weekend of beach therapy, even if we would have enjoyed staying a few more days. Thanks, Taryn and David for making this possible!
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