Florida Day 4

Thursday, April 6

Thursday started out earlier than any of us wanted to be awake! Really strong, very loud, really close storms went through the area at around 5:30am, and woke the whole cottage up!

The girls ended up on the futon mattress with me and Mem. The thunder was pretty intense, so we watched video clips from Sound of Music (remember the scene with the song "My Favorite Things"? :)) while lying in bed together. :) No one really went back to sleep, I think Mem and I could have slept, but the girls were too wound up.

I was looking at the possibility of dropping into a CrossFit gym while we were in Florida. Because we were up earlier, Mem and the girls were okay with making a plan to drive to St. Petersburg to drop me off at the CrossFit St. Pete gym, and then they went to breakfast while I went to class.

Tay wasn't a fan of the drive - that little girl just doesn't tolerate car rides sometimes! Poor kiddo. She got sick a couple times that morning. Oh boy. But....we have been down this road enough times, that after a run to Target, we got everything cleaned up, got her taken care of, and we were ready for the day.
We went to a children's museum in St. Petersburg called "Great Explorations". The girls LOVED it! There were big blocks to build with, tons of hands on creation stations with different manipulatives, a theater stage with hula hoops and dress up items, musical instruments, a make-believe veterinarian station (that was the favorite)...we had to practically drag the kids out of there!

The day was sunny once the rain moved out, and we wanted to get back to Treasure Island to enjoy it. :) Once we got back to the cottage, though, the EARLY wake-up time caught up with all of us, and nap time quickly happened!

After a couple hours of down time, we headed over to the beach one last time. It was a bit cooler, and the wind had picked up, but the girls still were just excited about the beach. :)

 I think someone was still a little tired :)

We were all hungry for diner before long...and so to Caddy's we went for our final dinner in Florida. We will miss this place for sure!

After dinner, we took a two minute drive back to the boardwalk that I ran the morning before. It was a beautiful walk. And, so many little lizards! :)

The rest of the night was cleaning, showering, packing, and the girls watched the Lorax while we prepared for an early alarm for our flight home the next morning. 

Florida Day 3

Wednesday, April 5
Wednesday started out sunnier, a little less windy, and just as warm! Love waking up to 75 degree weather!

I headed out for another early run, and found a boardwalk on the south end of Treasure Island. It was so pretty!

Once again, we put our suits on right away, got lathered in sunscreen, and by 8:30 we were headed to Caddy's for breakfast, then beach time after! We already had our beach chairs reserved for the day, too. :)

Breakfast with a view

 Dab! Lol!

LOVED this food, too. Egg whites, spinach, chicken, whole wheat toast...so yummy :)

BEACH time! :D

At noon, we headed back to the cottage to get cleaned up so we would be ready for our taxi to take us back to John's Pass for our dolphin watching boat ride.
Taxi ride

Waiting for our boat - Dolphin Quest

We saw dolphins! They were so close to us! Mom's and babies, little pods of dolphins, so playful. We learned that 50% of the baby dolphins won't make it past a year because of sharks and bad parenting - kinda sad!

We also saw some AMAZING houses in the bay.

It was such a beautiful day. The boat ride was an hour and a half long, and we all just enjoyed that time out on the water. The breeze felt so good!

After dinner, we got some frozen yogurt, did some shopping (I got little stuffed animal dolphins for the girls as a surprise for our flight home, and a Christmas ornament for our tree :)), and then we decided to try to find a place with good food to eat. We googled some menus, and ended up choosing to eat at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co restaurant. It was really good!

The kids meals came in a little boat with blue jello. Camryn loved the jello.

A few last views of John's Pass

Tired kiddos heading home.

We put on the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a relaxing evening. I wanted to get a peek at the sunset, and Taylor wanted to go, too, so we headed out to the beach for a little bit. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, but it was still really nice to just walk in the sand a bit!

Our last full day in Florida coming up next!