Last weekend we traveled down to good ole South Florida for about 36 hours. It was a bit of a whirlwind style trip, but we had such a great time that it was worth us to recap it for posterity. We always know we are likely to take a S. Florida trip in early January. Our friends' kiddo is a January baby so we always try to make it down for his birthday party. This year we decided to just stay one night and traveled down on Saturday, the day of his party.
We left our house bright and early. As in 6:45am. After picking up some McDonald's breakfast for the road, we were on our way. We made it all the way to Fort Pierce with the kiddos before we had to make a bathroom stop. That was the plan all along so it is always nice when that works out. We were only out of the car for less than 20 minutes then back in for the remainder of the trip down. We set up a movie for the kids to watch and the settled in to watch Descendants 2. Traffic was pretty light so we made it down earlier than expected. We ended up going by Mike and Sevie's house (the friends with the birthday boy) to help before the party. Once everyone was ready, we went out to the park to get set up. His party was at a park called Vista View (I think) this year. It was actually built on what was once a garbage dump. It was actually a great park! I would totally go there to walk or run all the time if we were local. The man-made hill (because of the garbage dump) was great for hill training which is something that is hard to come by in South Florida, for sure. You could tell it was a hot spot. Lots of people hanging around. The playground that the pavilion was by was great too but it was sort of...dense. Lots of stuff on it so it was hard to see through. That just meant you had to sort of follow your kids around as the parking lot was on one side and a canal on the other. Both sort of scary hazards. Our kids are playground pros so I wasn't that worried about them but since it isn't a normal area for us, I was somewhat cautious. We did let them go play a few times without us around as long as another adult from the party was in the area. They loved the playground though.
The party was a lot of fun. They had a Florida Panthers theme. Unfortunately, we don't follow the team up here really so we didn't have any Panthers gear but the kids loved their temporary tattoos that Uncle Mike gave them so they were sort of themed up. Haha! While at the party we were also able to take a glimpse of a burrowing owl near the pavilion so that was sort of exciting. The birthday boy blew out his candles and we celebrated with cake. When the party was winding down, we decided to head out so we could check into our hotel and clean up the kids somewhat. They were filthy because they played so hard.
Surprisingly, Will stayed awake the entire way to the hotel. It wasn't far, but we thought he would be out, for sure. We checked in easily. One reason we decided to only stay one night was that we were using points Steven has been racking up since he has been out of town so often for the last half of the year (he is in S. Florida for the entire week this week as well) and we only wanted to use some of our points as we are trying to hold the rest for our planned road trip for the summer. We got somewhat cleaned up. We failed to pack an extra outfit for Saturday night so we had to stay in the same clothes but at least we freshened up. We rested a bit and then headed back out to meet everyone for dinner.
We started by trying to go to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. The wait was an hour and a half though. Welcome back to South Florida! We decided instead to head over to a smaller pizza place. It was really yummy though and let the kids hang out and play around some while the adults were able to chat. After dinner we walked over to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. It was pretty yummy. We don't eat Dairy Queen (or ice cream really) very often at all so we all enjoyed it. By the time we were done with dinner and dessert, it was getting late-ish and the kids were all tired so we called it a night. I wish we had more time to spend with friends in South Florida, but we knew it would be a quick weekend.
Even though the kids were tired, it took them (namely Kenzie) a while to calm down after baths/showers and finally fall asleep. I have to share this side by side of Will from when he was about 8 months old in a hotel on a vacay we took and now at a few months over 4. Love this kid. His cheeks have definitely gotten smaller but he has the same great smile. I sometimes forget how huge of a baby he was.
Back to sleeping... Once they were asleep though, they were OUT. Once during the night Will started with a night terror but I caught it fast and thankfully was able to squash it. Usually that doesn't happen. I don't know why it worked, but I'm not knocking it. It didn't wake anyone else up surprisingly but again... not knocking it. Other than that (albeit easy) issue, the kids slept through to morning with no problems. We didn't rush out of bed in the morning but we did decide to get moving fairly early and were down having breakfast pretty quickly. We packed up and headed out.
We decided that since we were in South Florida, we would make a quick trip to the beach. Specifically to what used to be called John U. Lloyd State Park. It is still a state park but it has changed names. We know it by the old name though and still refer to it as such. The new name is way too long to remember. Haha! We grabbed some subs from Publix for a picnic lunch and made our way to the beach. On the way there we did manage to get slightly turned around and Steven accidentally ran a stop sign. Oops!! It didn't help that the taxi right in front of us ran it which made it even less noticeable. Plus, it was sort of random and snuck up on you. Halfway through the intersection we both realized what happened at the same time. Cue police lights. Uh oh.
The state police (specifically an FWC officer) pulled us over. He was already on his way into the state park and we were literally about .25 mile outside of it when it happened. He was very nice and asked us if we knew why he stopped us. We did and told him we were sorry. We made a comment from being out of town and from Orlando. He may have also noticed all the UCF stuff on the back of my car and he asked if we were UCF students or grads because his daughter attended there. We made sure to tell him we have three degrees from there between the two of us. (Though we both resisted the urge to tell him to "Charge on!" because that may not always be the appropriate response.) He ran all of our info and let us off with a warning. He told us to watch for stop signs and we told him to not worry because we had a small human in the backseat that had already decided to warn us about the one at the entrance to the state park (that was still about two tenths of a mile away) which made us all laugh a bit. Steven and I both decided that if we ever get pulled over again, we don't need our miniature backseat driver with us. She will never let us live it down.
After that bit of excitement, we entered the park. We drove down to find the area we have always gone to before. We realized on the way there that it was likely high tide, but beggars can't be choosers so we dealt with it. The beach has changed a lot in the years since we frequented it. Steven's family always went to this beach when he was younger and it seemed much nicer. Granted, it was a gorgeous day and any beach is fine by us, but there was a ton of seaweed which we can deal with... but also quite a bit of random garbage. Kenzie remarked at one point that we should do a beach clean up there. If it was a more local beach to us, I would definitely do that. It wasn't too bad though. The kids had a blast digging in the sand and playing at the water's edge. We were there for a little over an hour and it only took about 15 minutes for Will to be soaked. Never lasts long. Kenzie stayed a bit more dry but both kids needed to be changed before we went home. We planned for that though. We walked down the beach a ways and then just sat in our chairs watching the kids play while enjoying the sights and sounds of the ocean. Definitely our happy place. We discussed that our plans are still to retire to a beach one day. It's happening.
Eventually we packed it up on the beach and went to find a table right off the beach to eat lunch. While we were cleaning sand off the kids we saw an iguana on roof of the restrooms and changing rooms house thingy. We watched him walk along the roof and eventually jump into the tree. I often forget how common they are down there. We saw another smaller one crossing the street before we left, too. While eating, the kids enjoyed listening to the music being played by the group near us. It was upbeat and they were dancing so the kids liked that.
After eating we changed the kiddos and then loaded everyone into the car. I don't know that Will made it out of the park before he was asleep. He slept the entire way to Fort Pierce. Before we got there though, Kenzie announced she had to potty so we had to stop and run her in at West Palm. I managed to get her out of the car, go in to go to the bathroom, and get her back in the car all without Will budging. He was done. He did wake up fairly nice to go to the bathroom in Fort Pierce and then we started Despicable Me for the kids.
The drive home was easy enough and we made it home a bit earlier than we expected. Thankfully since it was a short trip, the clean up with easy enough. We had a great time though.
We left our house bright and early. As in 6:45am. After picking up some McDonald's breakfast for the road, we were on our way. We made it all the way to Fort Pierce with the kiddos before we had to make a bathroom stop. That was the plan all along so it is always nice when that works out. We were only out of the car for less than 20 minutes then back in for the remainder of the trip down. We set up a movie for the kids to watch and the settled in to watch Descendants 2. Traffic was pretty light so we made it down earlier than expected. We ended up going by Mike and Sevie's house (the friends with the birthday boy) to help before the party. Once everyone was ready, we went out to the park to get set up. His party was at a park called Vista View (I think) this year. It was actually built on what was once a garbage dump. It was actually a great park! I would totally go there to walk or run all the time if we were local. The man-made hill (because of the garbage dump) was great for hill training which is something that is hard to come by in South Florida, for sure. You could tell it was a hot spot. Lots of people hanging around. The playground that the pavilion was by was great too but it was sort of...dense. Lots of stuff on it so it was hard to see through. That just meant you had to sort of follow your kids around as the parking lot was on one side and a canal on the other. Both sort of scary hazards. Our kids are playground pros so I wasn't that worried about them but since it isn't a normal area for us, I was somewhat cautious. We did let them go play a few times without us around as long as another adult from the party was in the area. They loved the playground though.
The party was a lot of fun. They had a Florida Panthers theme. Unfortunately, we don't follow the team up here really so we didn't have any Panthers gear but the kids loved their temporary tattoos that Uncle Mike gave them so they were sort of themed up. Haha! While at the party we were also able to take a glimpse of a burrowing owl near the pavilion so that was sort of exciting. The birthday boy blew out his candles and we celebrated with cake. When the party was winding down, we decided to head out so we could check into our hotel and clean up the kids somewhat. They were filthy because they played so hard.
Surprisingly, Will stayed awake the entire way to the hotel. It wasn't far, but we thought he would be out, for sure. We checked in easily. One reason we decided to only stay one night was that we were using points Steven has been racking up since he has been out of town so often for the last half of the year (he is in S. Florida for the entire week this week as well) and we only wanted to use some of our points as we are trying to hold the rest for our planned road trip for the summer. We got somewhat cleaned up. We failed to pack an extra outfit for Saturday night so we had to stay in the same clothes but at least we freshened up. We rested a bit and then headed back out to meet everyone for dinner.
We started by trying to go to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. The wait was an hour and a half though. Welcome back to South Florida! We decided instead to head over to a smaller pizza place. It was really yummy though and let the kids hang out and play around some while the adults were able to chat. After dinner we walked over to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. It was pretty yummy. We don't eat Dairy Queen (or ice cream really) very often at all so we all enjoyed it. By the time we were done with dinner and dessert, it was getting late-ish and the kids were all tired so we called it a night. I wish we had more time to spend with friends in South Florida, but we knew it would be a quick weekend.
Even though the kids were tired, it took them (namely Kenzie) a while to calm down after baths/showers and finally fall asleep. I have to share this side by side of Will from when he was about 8 months old in a hotel on a vacay we took and now at a few months over 4. Love this kid. His cheeks have definitely gotten smaller but he has the same great smile. I sometimes forget how huge of a baby he was.
Back to sleeping... Once they were asleep though, they were OUT. Once during the night Will started with a night terror but I caught it fast and thankfully was able to squash it. Usually that doesn't happen. I don't know why it worked, but I'm not knocking it. It didn't wake anyone else up surprisingly but again... not knocking it. Other than that (albeit easy) issue, the kids slept through to morning with no problems. We didn't rush out of bed in the morning but we did decide to get moving fairly early and were down having breakfast pretty quickly. We packed up and headed out.
We decided that since we were in South Florida, we would make a quick trip to the beach. Specifically to what used to be called John U. Lloyd State Park. It is still a state park but it has changed names. We know it by the old name though and still refer to it as such. The new name is way too long to remember. Haha! We grabbed some subs from Publix for a picnic lunch and made our way to the beach. On the way there we did manage to get slightly turned around and Steven accidentally ran a stop sign. Oops!! It didn't help that the taxi right in front of us ran it which made it even less noticeable. Plus, it was sort of random and snuck up on you. Halfway through the intersection we both realized what happened at the same time. Cue police lights. Uh oh.
The state police (specifically an FWC officer) pulled us over. He was already on his way into the state park and we were literally about .25 mile outside of it when it happened. He was very nice and asked us if we knew why he stopped us. We did and told him we were sorry. We made a comment from being out of town and from Orlando. He may have also noticed all the UCF stuff on the back of my car and he asked if we were UCF students or grads because his daughter attended there. We made sure to tell him we have three degrees from there between the two of us. (Though we both resisted the urge to tell him to "Charge on!" because that may not always be the appropriate response.) He ran all of our info and let us off with a warning. He told us to watch for stop signs and we told him to not worry because we had a small human in the backseat that had already decided to warn us about the one at the entrance to the state park (that was still about two tenths of a mile away) which made us all laugh a bit. Steven and I both decided that if we ever get pulled over again, we don't need our miniature backseat driver with us. She will never let us live it down.
After that bit of excitement, we entered the park. We drove down to find the area we have always gone to before. We realized on the way there that it was likely high tide, but beggars can't be choosers so we dealt with it. The beach has changed a lot in the years since we frequented it. Steven's family always went to this beach when he was younger and it seemed much nicer. Granted, it was a gorgeous day and any beach is fine by us, but there was a ton of seaweed which we can deal with... but also quite a bit of random garbage. Kenzie remarked at one point that we should do a beach clean up there. If it was a more local beach to us, I would definitely do that. It wasn't too bad though. The kids had a blast digging in the sand and playing at the water's edge. We were there for a little over an hour and it only took about 15 minutes for Will to be soaked. Never lasts long. Kenzie stayed a bit more dry but both kids needed to be changed before we went home. We planned for that though. We walked down the beach a ways and then just sat in our chairs watching the kids play while enjoying the sights and sounds of the ocean. Definitely our happy place. We discussed that our plans are still to retire to a beach one day. It's happening.
Eventually we packed it up on the beach and went to find a table right off the beach to eat lunch. While we were cleaning sand off the kids we saw an iguana on roof of the restrooms and changing rooms house thingy. We watched him walk along the roof and eventually jump into the tree. I often forget how common they are down there. We saw another smaller one crossing the street before we left, too. While eating, the kids enjoyed listening to the music being played by the group near us. It was upbeat and they were dancing so the kids liked that.
After eating we changed the kiddos and then loaded everyone into the car. I don't know that Will made it out of the park before he was asleep. He slept the entire way to Fort Pierce. Before we got there though, Kenzie announced she had to potty so we had to stop and run her in at West Palm. I managed to get her out of the car, go in to go to the bathroom, and get her back in the car all without Will budging. He was done. He did wake up fairly nice to go to the bathroom in Fort Pierce and then we started Despicable Me for the kids.
The drive home was easy enough and we made it home a bit earlier than we expected. Thankfully since it was a short trip, the clean up with easy enough. We had a great time though.
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