FloRida SPRING BREAK 2012

Spring Break 2012!

I was invited on a Girl’s Trip to Cocoa Beach, Florida March 21^st-26^th with Laura, her boyfriend Alex’s mom (Karen) & Alex's sister (Afton).  Karen’s brother has a beach house right on Cocoa Beach, and was nice to let us stay there for the week.

We took a direct flight to Orlando on Wednesday. I HATE airports/TSA/flying more than anything in the world. And of course I find out when I’m standing in line for security/handing the TSA guy my boarding pass that my driver’s license is expired (it apparently had expired the week before on my birthday). For a second I panicked thinking he wasn’t going to let me through. But he did anyway. And then came the scan part. My purse gets pulled out of the scanner & the TSA lady says she’s going to have to run it through a second time & inspect it closer, and do some wand testing thing with it, and run it through a 3^rd time. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what I left in there that is causing so much alarm. I always get my bags searched- the best was on the way home from DC when the scanner made the large candles I’d bought look like bombs apparently & caused all sorts of alarm. Lesson learned, don’t bring home candles, esp when I ended up finding the exact same ones at Ross when I got home anyway.

Moving on.

The flight was pretty uneventful. They changed Laura’s seat assignment at the last minute which was annoying. I ended up having a six year old next to me, and her mom was on the other side of the isle. She slept most of the flight on my shoulder actually.

Thursday we went grocery shopping. We picked out cute beach towels, a beach umbrella, and pool air mattresses. We made lunch, and then went to the beach. After a few hours at the beach we came home and blew up the air mattresses and lounged at the pool. Uncle Jeff’s awesome beach house has a sweet full size pool with a diving board.

We went to dinner at Grill’s Seafood Deck and Tiki Bar. They have the best outdoor patio. I ordered coconut shrimp and clam chowder soup. Had to take advantage of the fresh seafood.

Friday we drove to Orlando (50 miles away) for the day. We went to the outlet mall (which are the same premium outlets as the ones I’ve been to in Vegas and Seattle). Love the outlets. I bought a bunch of jewelry, and a cute reversible bikini for $7 from Zumiez. (3^rd new swimsuit for the trip- one I’d bought before we left, Laura bought me one for my birthday, and then this one. Can you say obsessed?)

We went to dinner at Hard Rock Café, which apparently that location is the largest in the world!

Saturday we checked out Ron Jon’s. They have free parking for the beach, and then some metered parking too. The free parking was full, so we paid the meter while we shopped, but after shopping I decided that we should try and get a free spot since we were headed to the beach and didn’t want to have to worry about the time left on our meter. While Afton got the car, Laura and I stood in an empty parking stall we found to “save it”. I told her to hold her ground while people circled the parking lot looking for a space. I put on my best “dirty looks” face, and stood like I owned the place. LOL. Some cars just drove by us, but one guy honked at us and tried to get us to move. We held our ground for like 5 minutes until Afton returned. So worth it though.

After a day at the beach we came home and Jeff barbequed us some steak. We got Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and netflixed a funny movie, and had a relaxing evening in.

Sunday we went to the Pier, and played on the beach next to the Pier. (In previous days to the beach we were further North of the Pier.) Laura stayed back at the house and worked on homework. Afton and I took a lot of pictures though. We found huge pelicans! We went back to the house for lunch and played by the pool all afternoon, and took a ton more pictures- lots of action shots off the diving board.

We went to dinner at a pizza/pasta place literally 4 houses up the street from the house.

That night Laura, Afton, and I walked to the Pier since Laura hadn’t been earlier with us. The Pier was cool at night. I love walking along the shore at night listening to the waves crashing. It was a nice long walk.

That night we packed up all our stuff and didn’t go to bed until after midnight, and had to be up at 4am to leave for our early flight Monday. That was rough. The plane ride home was torture, and seemed way longer than the way there. Lots of turbulence. And since we hadn’t gotten much sleep all I wanted to do was sleep but I couldn’t get comfortable and the flight was FREEZING! I did read an entire book on the flight to/from Orlando so that was good.

Such a fun vacation. I had fun with Laura’s “in-laws” on our Girl’s Trip. We took a ton of pictures, Laura says I’m addicted and joked that I need to do a 12 step program for my photo taking obsession. LOL. And we blasted fun music 24/7 practically. I loved dancing poolside, jamming out in car, in the beach house, and on the beach. Flo Rida’s “Wild Ones” with Sia was the theme song for our trip, and I’m not exaggerating when saying we probably blasted it 50 times, at least!

PS Thanks to Mace for house-sitting my house, and taking care of my pets for the weekend. Mic drove to Cali for a couple days with his friends while I was gone. Aside from weekend trips to St George three times with my friends, Mic and I haven’t taken separate vacations/been away from each other for more than 2 nights while we’ve been married. And actually being so far apart ended up being harder then I’d anticipated. Opposite coasts of the country, LOL. My trip definitely won ;)

I’ll have to add pictures later (this post is super long anyway) and all our trip pictures are on Laura’s laptop.

Me, Afton, and Laura at the Pier at night 

Makes me laugh, I have a thing for taking random pictures with these things on every beach vac-a 

I don't think we packed enough bikinis! And 3 of these 13 were reversible..

Karen, Laura, Afton, Me owning Orlando.