Florida

"PALM TREEEEE!"

I am back from Florida! And I had a really amazing time.
On Tuesday, March 18, Courtney and I did not go to play practise (did I tell you that she's now in the play, too?) but went right home on the bus. At home, we had five minutes to clean up some left stuff in our rooms and change into comfy clothes for the 17-hour-ride. Then we got in the car with Sheila and Doug and headed out to St. Thecla to pick up the little ones from school. Sitting in the car for 17 hours was fine in the beginning but late in the night, when I just couldn't fall asleep because I couldn't find a position to get comfortable in the very backseat anymore, it did get pretty hard. When I finally switched with Courtney a little while before dawn and sat in the middle seat, I finally got a little sleep for about 2 hours.
I woke up around seven and the first thing I saw was a group of palm trees by the roadside going past my window. I felt like jumping, dancing and screaming "PALM TREEEEE!" (a feeling that occured every time I saw a palm tree during the entire vacation). After two more hours we arrived in Daytona at our hotel for the first night. It was a Holiday Inn right at the beach. After checking in, we put our bathing suits on and went down to the outside pool area that was connected to the beach by a set of stairs. It was so cool. I hadn't realized before how much I had missed the beach and the sea. I didn't swim in the ocean because they have sharks and nasty stuff like that down there, but I walked in the water which felt really nice. Later, I went in the pool for a little while and then we just lay in the sun on our chairs and I finally got some sleep. I got sunburned - I didn't think about putting sunscreen on.
The entire day was very calm and relaxing. In the afternoon, the college kids that were still on Spring Break started coming out of the hotels and filled the pool areas and the beach... Uuuuh there were some hotties out there! ^^ We had dinner in the hotel's restaurant and as we were sitting outside next to the pool area, eating, I see these three guys sitting down by the pool (mid-twenties, I'd say) and they have Jaegermeister towels and German stuff written on them and I felt like I heard them talk German although I wasn't sure. I told Sheila, and, open as she is, she got up and asked them whether they were German ^^ So I talked with one of the guys for a while - in German - and found out that they came from southern Germany and Austria and were on a vacation trip around the South of the US and Mexico. It was pretty funny.
The next day, we got up early and checked out to go to Disneyworld in Daytona. We planned to be there by 9, but the traffic was unexpectedly bad so it took us longer to get down there. We went to Epcot, which is one part of the humongous park. Although it was raining on our way there, it became a beautiful day - it was sunny and actually pretty hot. Unfortunately, the waiting lines for the two biggest attractions - the test track and "Soarin'" were always around 2 hours long, so we didn't do those, but we did do a lot of other fun stuff. The coolest thing was that they had a world showcase around a little lake - several countries were represented in miniature-villages, and Germany was there too! It looked very Southern, and everything was in German, even the employees in that area were German! They had a shop with German chocolate and candy, and we bought a lot there...
After a fun day in the park, we went back up to St. Augustine, where we stayed in another Holiday Inn for one night because we couldn't check in to our condo until the next day. When we had breakfast in the hotel in the morning, I thought I heard the people on the table next to ours speak German (I swear that one girl said "Wo sind die grossen Teller?") but I thought I was paranoid by now, so I didn't tell Sheila about it.
Our condo was very close to the beach (5-minute walk) and from the backdoor, you could see the pool area in the middle of the apartment buildings. It was furnitured in light colors - really pretty - and had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. One bedroom and bathroom for Sheila and Doug, the other set for us kids. Courtney and I got the two beds - hehe - and the little ones shared a big air mattress. From pretty much every window, you could see palm trees somewhere - PALM TREEEEEEEEEES!!
The first day after checking into our condo we spent unpacking and getting settled and while Sheila and Doug went grocery shopping a little later, Courtney and I took the kids to the pool.
On the second day, we went to two humongous outlet malls - one was an inside mall, the other one, which was also the bigger one, an outside mall. We didn't get to finish our way through the outside mall, but I still made a lot of really good deals and spent a lot of the money I got from my mom a while ago. I got some underwear, a pair of plaid shorts, a pair of short grey sweats that say "Lucky" on them, a green top, a Pirates of the Carribbean shirt at the Disney store, two pairs of Vans slippers (sorry Oliver, I didn't know your size so I didn't get you a pair - just let me know your size and I'll get you a pair of Vans or Chuck Taylors somewhere before I come back in June), finally THE perfect purse (it's ORGANIZED! I can find stuff in it!), and an outfit for Easter Sunday (a very cute white dress with light green and light purple stripes and white, matching flip flops). And everything was pretty cheap.
On Easter Sunday, we went to 7 am mass (because 9 am mass is way too packed) and afterwards, the little ones went on their Easter egg hunt around the condo. We had breakfast, and then all of us kids had a silly string fight (because everybody got a can of silly string in their Easter baggies). It was a lot of fun, we emptied it all and got it all over each other. The rest of the day we kind of just relaxed out by the pool in the sun.
On Monday, we finished our tour through the outlet mall, and I got another pair of shorts (brown) and a new bikini (brown with white dots, the top is reversible and has brown and white stripes on the other side) at Aeropostale, again, pretty good deals.
One day, I don't exactly remember which, we went downtown to visit the old Spanish fort of St. Augustine (it was a military base centuries ago). Later, we had lunch downtown. I had some reaaaally good shrimp. I also bought a shell ring in one of the little stores downtown.
On Wednesday, a couple that is friends with my parents and has two adorable little twin girls arrived in St. Augustine and visited us. We spent the day at the pool and had dinner together in the condo later.
On Thursday, they joined us again for a boat ride in the bay by St. Augustine (or was it a river?? I don't even know but it opened to the ocean). We even saw dolphins in the water! In the afternoon, we went to the beach for a while and at night, we went out to dinner at a seafood place. Again, I got shrimp - I just love shrimp. It was sooooo good.
On Friday, we had to leave again -unfortunately. The ride was hard, again, and again, I couldn't really sleep.
We got back home around 2.30 in the morning and the first thing we saw when stepping out of the car was snow - awwww.
Yesterday, we unpacked and re-adjusted a little bit to Michigan, all in all a calm day. We went to Grandma Tina's for dinner with her and GG, it was yummmmmy. Today, we went to church for noon mass and afterwards, we went to Gino's for brunch. Their buffett is really good.
Later, Sheila, Courtney and I went grocery shopping, and back home, Courtney and I spent about one hour doing Pilates with the help of Sheila's Pilates DVD. It was a really good workout, and we have plans to do that every day from now on.
Oh, by the way, the ACT stuff went pretty good. It was kinda cool with only the Juniors in the school too, I spent the time between tests with Heather and sometimes Amy. It's gonna take a while until I get the testing results. I think I did good though.

Pilates rocks!