Well, we are back from our Kid-Free Florida Vacation! Happy sigh! This could very well be the longest blog post Planted and Blooming has seen in ages, so hang on tight. I really don't blame you for just clicking out of the window and pretending you've never seen this blog.
The week before our vacation, Andrew's brother, his wife and their three kids came to visit for a week! They're living out of the country, so we don't see them very often at all! I think it's been about a year and a half since both families were together, so we had lots of fun! Claire, Molly and I spent most of the week at the house just because the activity was a bit much for us, but we joined in for the evenings and had lots of fun after all the big-kid stuff!
On Saturday night "Bramma and Brampa" came into town from Lake Tahoe to spend a week with the girls! they were able to visit with B&K and the kids before their flight on Sunday afternoon, so we pretty much killed a flock of birds with that plan! Andrew and I left Fort Worth on Sunday at 6am and we were on the beach in Siesta Key by 1pm!
You're probably wondering just how awesome our vacation was. I will say that it was a superior adult vacation. Of course, I have very little to compare it to.
On Sunday afternoon we went to the beach for a couple of hours and then we got a cab and headed to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner and then took in a late showing of The Dark Knight Rises. It was amazingly awesome and not nearly as dark and off-putting as The Dark Knight. We both agreed it was a tad long, but what do you expect from two people whose lives work in 24-minute increments?
On Monday we slept until 9 and then walked across the bridge to a spa for a massage. Andrew announced days earlier that he was hoping for a very strong "Arnold Schwarznegger when he was super buff" type to give him a massage, but he ended up with a tiny little old lady while I was blessed with a hefty gal. It was heavenly! We left the spa with a skip in our step and rushed right out for a big, yummy lunch at the Siesta Key Oyster Bar - fish tacos! We did a little souvenir shopping (okay, a LOT) for the girls and then filed up on ice cream at Big Olaf's. NOM NOM NOM.
I can't remember Monday night...If memory serves, we went back to our hotel and I slept for approximately 4 hours. Perfection.
On Tuesday we slept super late, skipped breakfast and went to the beach. I think all that delicious vacation time starts to run together. In short, we ate like crazy and I took at least a 3 hour nap every day. I think Andrew was starting to worry a little bit - I think he definitely got a taste of just HOW much a pregnant woman can sleep!
By Thursday I was really, really ready to come home and my emotions were starting to get the best of me. I rearranged my cell phone and added about 16 pics of the girls, and everything we talked about made me tear up. I am such a sap. We checked out of our hotel around 12 and left our bags in the office so that we could spend a little more time in the Village. We went back to the SKOB for lunch and then did a little more shopping.
Here's how unchained I was becoming at this point. We knew that we wanted to go back to this little wine shop to buy a bottle of wine for Andrew's parents, as they had been going above and beyond all week. (Great Dane puppy, dead car, plumbing issues, you name it. They're swoopers, those two! They just swoop on in and take care of things - even with all the craziness back home, we just relaxed and relaxed.) So we walked up to the wine shop and were trying to decide between Orange Splash Sangria and Triple Berry Shiraz. Andrew's mom is a sangria fan, so I was leaning toward the sangria, but the wine shop lady was all about giving us samples and letting us make an educated decision. We came home with four bottles of wine. I think my hormones and emotions combined with those four sips of wine went straight to my head. Andrew kept asking, "You really want all this wine? Really?" The crazy lady in me couldn't resist. We came home with two bottles of the Shiraz and two bottles of Cranberry Malbec - for Thanksgiving! Poor Andrew had the pleasure of schlepping my wine around while I complained about how much I miss alcohol.
We got to the airport around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon and checked in. Sarasota airport is about the size of our living room, so it didn't take long to see that our flight was delayed. Well, every flight out of the airport was delayed, because they all fly into ATL and every plane in ATL was grounded for 16 hours because of the horrible storms. Our 4:50 flight quickly became a 7:35 flight, putting us into ATL at 9, and it turned out that our 8:30 flight out of ATL was the last possible flight leaving that night, so we'd have to spend the night in the ATL airport because Delta will not give out hotel vouchers and the next flight was at 7am. Did I mention we checked the wine?
So I cry a little. We decide to assume that all of the flights OUT of ATL will be delayed and that the flight we've found leaving at 9 and are now flying standby will probably be delayed as well, so we just go for it. Of course our plan out of ATL is another 45 minutes late, so we're checking flights like crazy hoping that we'll make it. As luck would have it, the connecting flight was then delayed by another two hours, so THAT was good...or something. So the connecting flight is now leaving at midnight for DFW and I haven't napped. Andrew looked like he wanted to run away, but he was a trooper and kept me under control. We finally got into DFW at 2am and got a cab home from there, getting us into bed around 3. And if you're guessing I cried several times over the possibility being too tired to play with the girls on Friday, you're right. Luckily I was so excited to see them that 4 hours of sleep was perfectly acceptable. Lucy was overjoyed to see us, Claire wouldn't let me put her down and Molly looked like she thought she'd dreamed it all.
Andrew's parents had to leave the house around 9:30, so he and the big girls drove them to the airport and Claire and I hit the grocery store for a few items. I missed her so much that I spent most of what could have been a very short trip kissing and tickling her, turning our quick outing into a 2-hour event.
Everyone reunited at home around noon and went straight down for naps. We slept until 3:30 - bliss! After a quick dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup, the girls were back down and knocked out by 7:30. Two long weeks of visitors has left us with three very tired girls!
Today we're having a lazy day and will end it with dinner with the Townsends. I'd like to spend the evening working on cutting and ironing so that I can spend tomorrow doing a little sewing for the boys, but we'll see how exhausted I am by 8pm! I'll post a baby update later - lots to tell!
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