florida - the not so sunny state

well we're back from vacation. not sure we'll be taking another family vaycay any time soon and i'm not sure we'll ever head back to florida.

"up, up and away we go - flying on an airplane!" this was our little ditty we sang to nuggie. she did amazing. we had an easy, direct flight from nashville to ft. lauderdale and an empty seat b/t her papa and me and our little baby was a perfect travel buddy :-)

our first morning we got up and hit the beach. our hotel was sandwiched right between to very nice hotels who had private beach access. ours had a scrawny little patch of sand that was open to the public. it was dirty and littered and not alot of fun. it was also so humid that several times i tried to take pics the camera lens just fogged up. but i'm not fussing about that - it IS august in the south.

i think our beach trip was a little premature for the nugg. she didn't get that you can't drink salt water. the poor little thing snorted it several times and had red eyes and a runny nose :-( so i sat with her on the beach while daddy did some ocean exploring. she then proceeded to try to eat the sand. try keeping a very mobile 10 month old out of the sand... yeah, not so much. so we headed back to the hotel room. and it started to rain.

and rain.

and rain.

it rained the whole time we were there.

no sunny florida tan for me. not even a hint of color. nada. nothing.

so we went out to eat. alot. what else do you do? my favorite meal of the whole trip? the last one we had in the ft. lauderdale airport. i'm not even kidding. you want yummy sea food? you're in florida, right? that would be a no go. every place we went to stunk.  we tried a funky sports bar sorta place - icky bar food. middle eastern food - sounded fun and different... ick too. though they did have THE BEST hummus i've ever had. cuban food that was all the rave, supposedly - lukewarm, fried and the place was filled with flies. not to mention we were the only ones there, soooo the crazy owner talked our ears off about his wife loosing cheese. funny, but not worth the $$$ we spent on it. we wanted the best seafood. we asked several people and the concierge and went where they sent us. we got so-so meals and a HUGE tab.

this was our bar food night. ick. but we did get to sit on a nice patio and nuggie really enjoyed people watching.

these sounded so yummy - fried s'mores! diets aren't allowed to be packed when on vacation! so i left mine at home. these were not as good as they looked. i'd take fair food any day over this. ick.

our hotel was pretty nice. not at all what their website implied. i'm being very careful to not snap a pic of the huge, noisy highway that went right by our "quiet balcony" nugg loved being able to climb all around a big space without baby gates though. and the bed was heavenly! she also loved our huge floor to ceiling windows. and since we had a sleeping baby in our room we were all in bed by about 8pm every night. we DID get alot of sleep and that was a huge blessing!

eating. again. bub tried a huge bowl of seafood. i think the bowl looked more like a metal helmet. 

my little dinner buddy :-) that girl thinks straws are gifts from heaven!

we managed to dodge the rain drops for about 20 minutes and took sweet pea down to the pool. she LOVED it! they had a fabulous little shallow area that she could sit in and splash. she also loved going all around the pool with her papa. too bad we didn't get to go more.

not the best pic - but she was so tickled to be in that water!

we tried to go down to the keys one day - to sorta re-visit our honeymoon destination. florida drivers are worse then nashville drivers in the rain. after two hours of driving south and still not getting through miami (they had EVERY road torn up) we were all tired, frustrated and hungry - so we turned around and went back to the hotel. everywhere we went was so dirty and littered. and our flight home was a nightmare. our flight got canceled b/c of a storm. so we ended up stuck at the airport for 7 hours. then when we finally got home we found out our luggage was MIA. they couldn't tell us where our pack n play, CAR SEAT or three suitcases were. thankfully they had a car seat we could borrow. and really, we were at least heading home. but nuggie didn't have any of her night night lovies, we didn't have our toothbrushes or cell phone chargers. i mean, minor inconveniences really, but just the shriveled cherry on the top of a very sour trip.

sorry to be a grump - but i had to vent. this trip was awful! nuggie was a bright spot. she was such a trooper. she slept pretty well and was so happy. she's such a sweet pea :-)

now we're home - woot! our 5k is on saturday and we have orientation for nursery duty at church too. we're so excited to start that new adventure!