Beach, beach and more beach!

Today was all beach all day long and it was fantastic! Leslie and Greg walked the beach early to find some shells but came back empty handed. They plan to go out earlier another morning to see if they might have better luck. Greg did take a few pictures of some cool birds.



We set up our cabana on the beach this morning and stayed out all day long except to come inside to eat. The beach had very few people on it and we loved it. We spent time snorkeling, floating on our tubes and napping under the cabana.


The kids made a great sand castle. People would walk down the beach and take pictures of it and one man even told Nick he was an artist. Ha ha... they loved it. They hope some of it will be there tomorrow so they can add to it. Leslie found little shells for the doors and decorated it nicely... the picture doesn't show it very well.



This is an outside picture of our condo; there are 6 units. We are on the second floor on the far left if you are facing the condo. The balcony can be accessed through the front room and the master bedroom and we even have a tiny balcony off to the side from our bathroom. We haven't figured out when we would ever use it but we have it just the same. You can see the little door in this picture off to the side of the building... that is our master bathroom.

The beach is a short walk down a sandy lane from our condo. Today we saw a black snake in the tall grass. We didn't try to catch it because we were not sure if it were poisonous or not. Greg thinks it was a King snake which are constrictors so we wouldn't have been bitten.

Later in the evening when the lighting was perfect we took Leslie back down to the beach to take some senior pictures of her. She is so pretty. I can't believe she is a senior in high school... makes me very sad. I try not to think of our family vacations coming to an end but I cannot stay in denial forever. Funny how life keeps chuggin along and there is nothing you can do to slow it down. Here are some pictures we took of her tonight.








Leslie has been a good sport all these years with all three of us having the same birthday. Although she always gets to take part in everything we do, it has to be hard to be the only person who does not have a birthday on August 1st. (Not something we planned by the way). Leslie has not been cheated in anyway, she has had HUGE birthday parties with ponies and all. She all of the sudden stopped wanting to celebrate her birthday and that too makes me sad. She is growing up.

We took some jumpy pictures on the beach tonight too.....





Leslie's boyfriend Anthony called tonight (first time they have spoken to one another since we left). Leslie went outside onto the balcony for some privacy so she could talk. Ben continually stuck his head outside the door to peek at Leslie and then he would also peek out at her from the bedroom curtains which drove her insane.

Nick helped Ben pick on Leslie and when Leslie would say "It's not funny Nick" he would reply "I know... it's hilarious". Nick is our comedian on the trip... always has some kind of wise crack or trick up his sleeve. He found a wind up radio in the condo and has been having a great time playing with it. It has a light, alarm and a radio and when it gets low on power all you have to do is wind it up. There is no one like Nick and I am so happy to call him my son. :) Poor Ben, all he wants is a little attention. Maybe he will join us on the beach tomorrow.

Speaking of beach tomorrow, we have been watching Shark Week on the discovery channel (which I don't know why we always do this, but we do). Tonight we learned Florida is the number one deadliest water on the earth. 618 shark attacks and Australia had half that many. Sure does make tomorrow's day on the beach exciting. Maybe we will spend more time under the cabana. :) Greg said he is going to go out in the morning and look for a seal float to ride around on.... always a wise guy.

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.

Disney Hollywood

Day three was a magical day.... not because it was all three of our birthdays, but because we were headed to "The Happiest Place on Earth". Disney Hollywood!

We arrived early to Disney and took all our documentation over to the customer service window. We needed to show Nick's birth certificate and both mine and Greg's drivers license as proof of our birthday's all being on August 1st. She handed us our three Happy Birthday buttons and then handed Leslie her "I'm Celebrating" button. I chuckled because I could tell by the look on her face she was NOT going to wear an I'm celebrating button. Those of you who know Leslie know "the look". Ha ha.

Our first stop was the Rock n' Roller coaster. This roller coast was amazing and it kept getting better each time we road it. The very last time we road it they played the song Sweet Emotion and it was incredible. The coaster took off so fast that it took your stomach the same way a very steep hill would have done. Then the entire ride was in the dark so you had no clue which direction you were going to head in next. There were glow in the dark signs and they played Aerosmith music loudly during the whole ride. We now feel every roller coaster should have classic rock music blasting as you ride it. We LOVED this ride.

Our next ride was the Tower of Terror. I am afraid of heights and both Greg and I do not like the feeling of falling, so needless to say we were not super pumped about this ride. We both were glad we rode it in the end. The first ride was terrifying because of the anticipation of the drop. Once we realized it was nothing like the Drop Zone at Kings Island we started to have fun with it.

The ride is designed to look like a hotel from the late 30's with a haunted elevator. They have the ride programmed so the ride sequence is different each time you ride it. We rode it 3 times and each time we didn't know when it was going to drop. Our last ride they made it look like the ride was over but then the elevator went up really fast and dropped one last time. You can't help but laugh while riding this ride.

We watched a Little Mermaid show that made you feel as if you were really underwater and the seats we sat in squirted water on us during the show to make us feel like we were really in the show. It was pretty cute.

We visited the Honey I Shrunk the Kids movie set too......

We saw a Star Wars show and rode in a Star Wars flight simulator.

They had a Narnia exhibit but we were not overly impressed with it. We did get to see the stone Aslan stood on as well as some of the costumes worn in the movie.

We drove all the way to Florida just to visit NYC. :)

We watched an Indiana Jones stunt show as well as a Muppet 3D show which I personally loved. They made you feel like you were sitting in the actual Muppet theater. The old grouchy guys were sitting up in their seats and interacted throughout the show too. I have a soft spot for the Muppets so I loved it.

Greg and Nick had a little thing they did with their birthday buttons. When someone said Happy Birthday (which was at least 100 times that day) they would smack their buttons, make the peace sign with their hands, and say thank you. Les and I acted like we didn't know them and kept walking. :)

We ate ice cream cones from Hollywood Scoops and then called it a day at 5:00 which is hilarious because we pitched a fit that the park closed early at 7:00 that night. We were so very hot, tired and sore and we needed a nap desperately. We had a great time and we did it all so it was time to go.



We drove back to the hotel and Greg, Les and I all took a nap while Nick built his new legos from Lego World. We slept for over 2 hours and Ben started getting angry with us.... he had been in the hotel the entire day and he wanted some entertainment.

We went out to eat at a really good Mexican restaurant. They had an amazing buffet AND they had pizza on the menu for Nick; everyone was happy.

The strip near our hotel had the most hilarious souvenir shops on it. There was a store with a huge wizard on top of it as well as one with a huge mermaid lady on it. Greg said the mermaid lady scared him and he may have nightmares from it. We drove to a few of these oddly advertised stores and found the same old Florida souvenirs that are found in every other Florida store..... alligator heads, baby sharks in a jar, tiny shirts with inappropriate sayings on them. Ben especially liked their beach towels.

Each year we visit Florida on our Birthdays we have eaten at Crabby Joe's. We were rather sad this year that we wouldn't see Crabby Joe's..... but look what we found instead. :)

We had one more thing on our "to do" list from Disney....... find a flat penny machine. Nick and Leslie have a flat penny collection that they have had for years. Nick really wanted a penny with Disney World on it. We saw one in Downtown Disney while we were there the night before, but we didn't have cash on us. I told Nick, "Don't worry, we will get one."

Well, it was 10:45 at night and we still had not bought a flat penny. I asked around a few of the shops hoping there was an off chance there were other flat penny machines. ( I REALLY didn't want to go back to Downtown Disney). A lady told us she thought she saw one at The Golden Coral so we drove over to see. The lady there told me she had lived in Florida for 32 years and had raised her kids here and she had never heard of flat pennies.

Sooooo, off to Downtown Disney we went. We were terribly rushed because we knew the stores would be closing soon and we were leaving in the morning for Siesta Key so it was now or never for the flat penny. Greg pulled up out front and the three of us jumped out. We ran right away to Disney Quest because we remembered seeing a flat penny machine there yesterday. We were so excited to see the machine because we would have the penny and be back to the van within a few minutes.

The machine however only made Disney Quest pennies and not Disney World pennies. We ran, jumped and zig zagged our way around all the people through Downtown. We ran all the way through Pleasure Island to the Marketplace and finally found a store with a machine with Disney World pennies. The store was about to close and I almost hugged and kissed the ladies working there. Nick and Leslie are now proud owners of Disney World flat pennies. :)


It was a great birthday and we filled it up with great memories. We woke at 6:30 that morning and fell into bed at 12:30 the next day. What a day! I know Disney is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, but we head to the beach tomorrow and to ME.... that is the happiest place on earth. :) Can't wait!