Vay cay shun.

When I planned our vacation down to Florida, I honestly had no idea what I was getting us into. We left Monday night around 10:30 and drove through the night thinking that it would be great to drive wile the kids slept. O. M. G. BAD idea. Lily was up until 5:30 in the morning anyway and Jim and I were so exhausted we were going to kill someone. We stopped a billion times and around 1:30 on Tuesday, we stopped in Evansville, Indiana. Turns out that our GPS took us a horrible way down to Georgia. It truly was a crappy drive, and we couldn't drive anymore. Our pit stop in Georgia to visit my friend would have to wait...Jim and I were going to die if we didn't sleep. So we had Celia book us a hotel in Nashville and were asleep by 8:00. The next day we started out for our next 13 hour drive. Driving through Tennessee is amazing. Such a beautiful state!! We finally hit our destination at 11 at night. Shorts, flip flops, sleeping with the fan on, sun burn. This place is sweeeeet! Day 1 of the real part of vacation: We went to a play ground that had a sand volley ball court...the sand was this amazing white, powder like sand...I wish Minnesota had sand like that!! On the way back to the house, there was a wall that had little lizards all over it. So fun!! After that we went to Clearwater Beach, Florida to see the ocean. It did not disappoint. My first time seeing the ocean was awesome. There was more of that heavenly sand, hundreds of seagulls, pelicans, boats, a cool pier, sea shells galore, and of course, the powerful waves. After a few hours of shell hunting, playing in the water, flying kites and running away from the sea gulls that attacked Noah to steal his cheese puffs, Jim and I took the kids to the pier. It was so cool. There were stands set up along the whole thing selling their creations. We got the kids necklaces and took some pictures and by the time we were done, the sun was gone and it was time to go home. Denisa's mom had brought the kids doughnuts from Dunkin Donuts (Thank you Margareta and Tiberiu)so we got our first taste of those yummies and then we headed back to home base. I got FRIED by the sun. I can't believe it! The kids have been having a great time playing (and Fiona has tried on every pair of shoes in the house). Today it's raining so we're going to head back to Clearwater to the aquarium where the dolphin from "Dolphin Tale" is located. Lily is so excited, since she watched the movie just before we left for vacation. More to post later. :)