After our day at Magic Kingdom, we drove to our hotel in
Tampa. We woke that morning, had hotel
breakfast, and got ready for the beach with Sara and Dan and their kids. Google maps took us on a route to the base,
which apparently took us on a toll road but not the typical toll where you can
pay with coins or credit card. This was
exclusively for commuters with a pass in their car. Sara warned us about it but it was too late. I was really surprised that Google doesn’t
have a feature to warn you about that kind of thing. Ryan was stressing. I thought it would probably not turn into
anything. We eventually saw that the
rental car company charged us like $25 to pay for the fine or whatever. How annoying.
But we made it to the base and Sara and Dan drove us on and
we headed to the beach. The base is
really big and we got to see a lot of it along the way. I guess it’s at least 30 minutes from Sara’s
house, usually longer. It’s quite the commute
for Dan, and can get expensive with those toll roads!
We had the beach mostly to ourselves. It is a gulf beach (or did they call it
something else? I can’t remember all the
terms. But it was calm because it’s
surrounded by land). The color of the
water was a really strange brown color.
It looked like murky, lake water you see at the docks that are
polluted by all the boats. But it
was just from the algae. It was WARM and
the kids had fun.
Josh is such a funny, happy kid. We had fun hanging out with him and Rachel
and getting to see where they live.
After we stopped for lunch, it was starting to show that my
kids were tired. Especially Sadie. I can’t remember what the fit was about, but
she started whining really loudly in the food court. So we went outside to hang out. After lunch we decided to be done swimming
and just go relax at Sara’s house for a bit and get showered up for pictures
later.
I thought beach pictures would be a nice change for our
family pictures since we can’t get that scene in Idaho. But I also knew that the forecast showed
rain, and most of the rain came in the evenings. So I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. We decided to keep it simple. I didn’t curl my girl’s hair like I had
planned. We just left it natural. And we didn’t want to drive too far to find a
great beach. We stayed close to
home. I just didn’t want to waste time
doing those things and then have the pictures not even turn out because the
rain started or my kids were just too tired and not cooperating.
But they actually turned out really great!
Sadie is going through the awkward smile stage. Which is too bad because she is really a cute
girl :)
I was really happy with how they turned out! And so thankful Sara was willing to take the
time to shoot them for us.
After pictures, we finished packing up and made the 2 ½ hour
drive to Melbourne. That put us there
around 11 pm or later. We met their new
dog, Sugar, who was really excited about all the visitors! It took awhile for the kids to wind down. You would think they would sleep in. But no, Dylan was up at like 7:30 the next
morning. That kid just can’t sleep if
the sun is up, no matter how late he goes to bed. That’s something I used to stress about, but
I’ve given up on trying to fight it. It’s
a losing battle…
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