A little slice of heaven

Day four of our vacation has finally arrived; we are at the beach! After all the fun chaos of Disney it feels so nice to be at our condo in Siesta Key to relax and enjoy the sun and surf.

It was a 2 hour drive from Disney to our condo and the kids still fought over who got to ride in the back seat. Some things never change even when on vacation. The back seat allows you to stretch out and sleep more like a bed so everyone wants the back seat.

It was Leslie's turn since Nick rode in the back seat on the way to Disney from Valdosta. Shweeew, glad we got THAT worked out. Maybe we should have flipped a flat penny to see who got the back seat...... dang penny should have some kind of purpose after all the hard work to get it.

Our condo is beautiful and we love it... here are some photos of the inside.

Kids room

Front room

Front room again with the little office table...yay for wifi!

Kitchen

Master bedroom

Kids bathroom

We spent a couple hours on the beach walking, swimming and playing in the sand from about 2-4pm. Here at Siesta Key the sand is pure white and it is very soft. The sand never gets hot so there is no need for shoes regardless of what time of day it is. The water is like bath water and you can see your feet while standing in it.

Today there are a lot of people on the beach (and to us a lot of people is 10 or more, we are used to a very private beach on the Atlantic side); but it is Sunday so we think tomorrow there will be a lot less. If you looked up the beach to the public beach you could see a huge sea of people so really we have very few people in comparison.


Then we were all hungry and there was nothing in the cupboards so we went to the grocery. We paid twice is much for everything here in Florida than we would have at home. Milk was 2.89 a gallon. :) Still, having a condo an buying groceries is so much cheaper than eating out every meal. Plus, everyone can eat when they are hungry.

After the grocery we chilled out a bit, ate some food, watched some tv and waited for the sun to go down a little more. Around 7:30 we headed back out to the beach to walk for a while. There is nothing like the beach at dusk, the light breeze, the sunset, the cool sand. ahhhhhh


Outside our condo Leslie found the tiniest toad on the planet.... never have I seen a toad this small.


As we were walking we felt as if we were placed in a hypnotic trance. We heard drums in the distance calling us closer. We continued to follow the sound of the drums all the way to the public beach where the sea of people were still there. A lot of other people were following the drums too from all directions.

The beat sounded a lot like a tribal beat. Once we arrived at the location where the drum sounds were coming from, we still couldn't see the people playing the drums because of the huge crowd surrounding them. Greg and Leslie weaseled up through some of the people to get a glance and came back to report to Nick and I. Leslie's description of the scene was drums with drunk people. She said she could smell the alcohol just from walking up there. Greg took a couple pictures but you still can't see the actual drum people. We lost our hypnotic trance and headed back to the condo.

While walking back to the condo we were talking amongst ourselves about how we will miss crab night. Crab night is when we would walk the beach on the Atlantic side at night with a flash light and you could watch hundreds of crabs run from the sand to the ocean to eat. Sometimes they would almost run right over your feet. We have had crab night each year we visit Florida since the kids were very small and it made us sad to think we would miss it.

Then Greg says...."Wait a minute, hold the phone.... what is THIS?"

A CRAB HOLE! Yes, Siesta Key has crabs!!! Not very many so there will be a challenge to our crab night but there will be a crab night indeed! :)

Greg found another toad at the entrance to the condo... we have more toads than lizards.


It was a beautiful night and tomorrow we look forward to spending the entire day at the beach. We plan to set up our cabana and spend the whole day on our floaty rafts, napping under the cabana, building sand castles and reading good books.