Monday, June 1, 2015

Vacation, All We Ever Wanted

I remember the first time Tim and I ventured down to Sarasota by ourselves for a family vacation. Clare was three, Danny was four months, and overall it took a long time for it to feel like a vacation. My first thoughts upon arrival were, "What are we doing?" and "How are we going to manage to enjoy ourselves?" We ultimately did, of course, and after years of practice I would go so far as to say that we have gotten it down to a science.
Since we were fortunate enough to spend time in FL together over Easter, we decided that this year we would break it up and spend the middle part of our week at Disney. (See separate post.) So, we drove down and spent the first two days just relaxing at the beach and the pool. That first full day of vacation we spent several hours on Siesta Beach, and it was probably the best family visit to the beach we have ever had!

The kids were always up for going to the pool, no matter how long we'd been at the beach. To liven up our pool visits, I grabbed an inflatable alligator at Publix, which won the points with Danny that I knew it would. Let's just say it led to some very lively games with Tim!

Any visit to Stoneybrook isn't complete without plenty of gator watches. One night, driving back from dinner, we had an epic viewing of this guy, who was camped out quite close to one of the parking lots:
We ate at all of our favorite spots, beached, swam, read, napped...everything a family should do on vacation (when not trekking around amusement parks, that is). Most importantly, we spent lots of time together as a fivesome, which rates this a five-star vacation!

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