Florida - Saturday, June 22nd
07-17-2002,

Florida - Saturday, June 22nd...

July 17, 2002

Saturday, we woke up to a rainy morning. That was quite a disappointment in a way, because we so wanted to be out and about doing fun in the sun sorta stuff. We really did enjoy the morning though and spent it just laying around, reading, looking at our shells, and just hanging out together. Jen even painted Tonya's nails for her (Tonya had done mine and Cory's the night before). I really enjoyed these quite type mornings, heck, I enjoyed everything about the trip, lol. Finally, the rain slowed down, and while it was still a rainy-type of day, overcast and dreary, we said.. let's go to the beach. We didn't want to let a whole day slip away without doing something that we so wanted to do. It only took us a few minutes to get ready, I think we were all glad that we were doing so. The thing is, it's fun to have relaxing days of doing nothing.. some of my favorite days are that way.. but we were in a beautiful place, with beautiful beaches, and we wanted to be enjoying that. We decided to go to the South Beach this time, and you can catch the tram right behind the condo, so we grabbed our stuff and we were off. In this picture you can see the back of the condos.. we had that lovely view of the water, and a fountain, and it was just so beautiful. This was the sign for the tram, and underneath, it had a smaller sign, don't feed the alligators. That just thrilled me to no end, although I am not sure why, giggle. But I got some pictures of the girls in front of it, and I can't wait to do a "Don't feed the Alligators" page in my scrapbook. It was neat being able to walk to the tram, it was all board-walky and beachy and just totally neat. When we got there the tram was pulling up, so it was perfect timing as well, and we were soon on our way thru the mangroves to the beach.

When we got to the beach, we were just so excited to be there. It was still cloudy and gray, but we had already decided to make the most of it. It was neat, because with the stormy day, there were a lot more waves, and we were excited about that. There on the gulf, it's not very wavy, but on this stormy day, it was a little more so. We right away just started doing our own thing, which was pretty cool. Tonya, Cory and I head off in different directions to find shells (I so love how you can look and find awesome ones and then a while later look in the same place and find totally different ones.. being on the ocean is so cool), and we were all grabbing some for Jen as well. She, is not really a beach-goer, as you well know by now, so we always tried to make it a little less painful for her, and she seemed to really enjoy laying on her chair, reading her book. She was in the middle of a great book, that she was really enjoying, so I really think that she would have been happy wherever she was, as long as she could read. Without the hot sun, she seemed a lot happier as well. For what started as a crappy day (weather wise), really turned out to still be pretty awesome. It wasn't long however, before we migrated towards the water. We were finding awesome shells (and were so glad that we brought our shell bags), but those waves just really looked like so much fun. So off to play we went. It was awesome.. reallly a lot of fun, and we were cracking up as we were being pummeled by the waves. Cory had her water camera with her that day, and she took some funny pictures of us out there. I haven't seen them yet, but I am very much looking forward to seeing how goofy we looked. We didn't see any cool things on this day, like we did at the North Beach on Thursday. I forgot to mention in my previous entries, that as we were playing in the water on Thursday, we saw a bunch of manatees in the water really not all that far away from us. They were huge, and you could see them sorta roll up out of the water. At first we were freaking out, when we first saw them.. but it was awesome, and I am glad we did. I have to tell you though, as we made our way out further into the water I would get a bit nervous, but Cory and Tonya always seemed so calm about it, and it was fun playing out there, so I tried not to think about what was swimming around me. I went to check on Jen and sit with her for a few minutes, and that is when Tonya and Cory made their way out even further, and got stuck out there for a few. They were a little nervous and had trouble getting back in, and I will admit that I am so glad that I didn't get stuck out there with them, I would have totally freaked.

Since the weather was getting worse, and the water was getting worse, we decided that maybe we should stay out for a while, and Cory went to lay down with Jen for a bit, and Tonya and I walked down the beach looking for cool shells. All of a sudden, the wind started whipping at our skin, and it was starting to rain, so we figured we better get back, and we turned around. I didn't realize how far we had gotten, until we turned to go back. By the time we made it back, it was starting to really come down, so we all got our chairs and sat up on the deck and watched the storm roll over the ocean. It really was on of my favorite moments, we all really just seemed at peace, and it's hard to explain, but it just really felt good. As much as I normally hate being outside during storms, it was just totally awesome to watch it there, and we got some pretty cool pictures too (no big surprise there, lol). After a while though, we decided to make our way back to the Condo, so back on the tram we went.

We had a late lunch, and hung out at the condo for a little bit, and then decided to drive over to the Mall. We had all pitched in to get Laura a nice thank you gift, and since it was raining anyway, what better time to go do so. I tell you, I wish that we had more time to spend at this mall, it really was totally beautiful there. We walked around a bit, going to a few different stores.. and we found the perfect gift for Laura without too much fuss, so it was really nice. Tonya and Cory even splurged on this wonderful hand treatment stuff at Crabtree and Evelyn, and we were looking forward to pampering ourselves with that later, giggle. I would have liked to cruise thru the mall a little longer, but I think Jen had reached her shopping limit for the month, and she steered us out of there the first moment she got, lol. So it was back to the Condo we went.

We sorta just hung around some more, talking, reading.. we took some really nice pictures with the timer on the camera and just enjoyed each other's company. We were trying to decide what we wanted to do with our evening, we talked about going souvenier shopping or whatever, and Cory said that she would really like to go to this free water ski show that we saw advertised, so we decided to do that and off we went. It was fun, okay, it was different. It was raining, and so we had to use umbrellas sitting in the stand, and it was this christian youth group, they teach children how to water ski, to keep them off the streets. How neat of an idea is that. I really enjoyed the show, for the most part.. the intermission was a little cheesy (okay a lot cheesy, and the woman who was singing could cut glass), but I am really glad we went, because it just added to the trip somehow. Again, I can't explain it.. it was just a feeling of togetherness for me. We had fun just being together. Afterwards, it was back to the condo again, for Jen's yummy rib dinner. She had left them cooking most of the day, so by the time we got back, the place smelled so yummy. We were starving, and it didn't take long for us to get the table set and sit down to eat.. and boy did we eat. By the time we were finished, I was so full that I thought I was going to bust. They were so good though, and I didn't want to stop, lol. I was pretty miserable though, too full.. and so I asked Tonya if she wanted to go for a walk. OMG.. what a walk that was. We decided that we were going to try to make it to the coffee shop, not really sure how far it was, but we figured that it at least had to be 2 miles... and that we could do it. By the time we were walking for 45 minutes, we were like where the heck is this place, but neither one of us wanted to give up, so we kept going...and going. Finally, after an hour of walking, we got there. I had to go to the bathroom so bad, soooo bad, and had for the past 15 minutes, so I was so happy to finally be there. We both were...but then we still had the long walk back, lol. That's when it happened... Tonya killed a snail, lmao. She was walking, and I looked down and saw it and said, Tonya, no... but it was too late.. .crunch!!! She was so cute, cause she felt soooo bad, so of course I kept teasing her. Okay, well I teased her until my foot skimmed across the top of another snail and sent it flying (hey, I was just helping it along it's way, lol). I cannot even tell you how many snails there were, and everytime we heard the littlest crunch on the way back, we were cringing. It was funny in a gross sorta way I guess. We tried not to step on anymore, I swear.. but it was sooooo dark out and you just couldn't see them.

Our walk was wonderful though, and the buildings there are just beautiful, with all these fountains and just very pretty things to look at. By the time we were half way back though, we were both exhausted, and it felt like it was taking forever. We were worried that Cory and Jen would be worried about us, but we had no choice but to just keep going. We had a great time though, and Tonya told me all about how she and Mike met, and their first date, and all the places they lived, and their wedding and all that fun stuff that we've never talked about before, and that made it go faster. I think we were both happy to be back though, and Cory was a little worried about us. Jen had gone to bed long before, lol, that girl.. when she is ready to sleep, she is ready to sleep and nothing is going to stand in her way. We laughed about that this whole trip I think.

Cory, Tonny and I got out the wonderful stuff they had bought earlier that day.. and we had a pamper fest. We took turns doing each other's hands and feet and it was just oh so wonderful. Man, it really was wonderful. I don't think any of us really wanted to go to bed that night.. we always try to extend our days and nights when we are together, cause they go so quickly. But eventually we couldn't keep our eyes open, so it was off to bed we went. What a wonderful, full day it was. I enjoyed every minute of it. Oh and the next day, we went back to measure how far we walked.. it was 3 miles each way.. I still cannot believe that we walked 6 miles.. wow.