For me the absolutely best thing about warm weather, Florida, summer is basking in the sun.... we got A LOT of that during this trip. Our very first day in St. Petersburg was the warmest day of the week. I think we got up to 75 degrees that day. It was sunny without a cloud in the clear blue sky and GORGEOUS!
After breakfast and a few errands, we stumbled upon this great little place called The Caddy Shack. It was this little beachfront restaurant. If you paid $5 to park in their lot, you could spend the whole day hanging out at their beach property. If you patronized their establishment you got your $5 from parking off your bill. They even offered complimentary beach chairs to lounge on. It was a tiny slice of heaven.
We spent that clear, beautiful, amazing day with our feet dug into the sand and the sun beating down on us. Oma buried the kids in the sand up to their necks. Jeremiah took a VERY keen liking to the surf and ventured out far enough to make even the pretty brave momma nervous. Noah (who had SWORN he was not going in the water because he didn't want to get eaten by a shark) quickly threw his worries aside and dove into the surf. The kids collected shells and played in the sand and swam and swam and swam. We had an INCREDIBLE day!
Finally we sampled the Caddy Shack's cuisine....it was palatable...but the funny part was after our meal.... I hadn't really paid much mind to the seagulls flying about. (After the fact, I realized they were circling us like vultures around a carcass.) We had hardly finished our meal. In fact, in true Kastner fashion the kids had merely finished phase 1 of their meal and were taking their typical Kastner break to run about, do some Ninja moves, and spread the mess of their eating around a bit...when all of a sudden the seagulls started dive bombing our table! I swear! I was scared one of my children would be picked up and carried away. I had just said, "Are you guys done with this stuff?" before the attack began so then I quickly changed it to, "Well now you are done with this because you're not eating it after those germy birds picked at it. It was hysterical! (and maybe a little frightening).
We wanted to do some shopping along the little shoppy/boardwalk area. My Aunt didn't want to come along so we left her sitting in the car to "people watch." We weren't in this cool little surf shop but 15 minutes when my mom said, "Auntie Marge is on the loose!" She took off to go track her down as she was marching up and down the streets. By the time my mom reached her, Auntie Marge was fit to be tied! She was scolding my mom and saying, "You've been gone so long! I got tired of waiting!" (seriously and truly we weren't gone more than 20 minutes TOPS).... then she got angry with my mom because we weren't in the store she thought we should have gone in. We quickly returned to our vans (we were in two separate ones) and started the trip back to her house. All the way my Aunt scolded my mom for leaving her so long, driving too fast, not turning wide enough, going in the wrong store, EVERYTHING.... my poor mother was about to pull her hair out.
So as we left the Treasure Island area, Noah had to pee, and we were running out of gas. We stopped to fill up and let Noah empty out.... My mom walked Noah into the gas station to go to the bathroom. It was an older gas station with the bathroom access outside of the building, so the man handed my mother a key...attached to the key (so that no one would walk off with it) was an empty water bottle. Noah's eyes grew wide at the sight of it. So they left the station and traveled around the building to the bathroom. Noah started telling my mom, "I don't have to go anymore. I don't have to go anymore." They arrived at the door to the bathroom, and my mom pulled it open and thought, "No way! He is NOT going to pee in there." It was filthy with rusty pipes and a horrible toilet. Noah said, "They have a toilet!" and proceeded to take care of his business in that disgusting place. It seems he thought they didn't have a bathroom so he was going to have to pee in that tiny empty water bottle... we about peed our pants laughing.
We took two more trips to the beach during our Florida experience. The next one was at sunset the evening we returned from Orlando. It was amazing, beautiful, incredible and memorable. Noah wanted to see the sunset on the beach. We looked up when the sun would set in St. Petersburg from Orlando, and then we HIGHTAILED it out of there to get to the beach in time. We arrived just as the sun was setting into the water. It was amazing, and we got TONS of great pictures. I love moments like that. Where you can just sit there and marvel over the God we serve Who made that water and this beach and that sun that's setting into that water. And He didn't care just enough to give us the sun for warmth and the water for sustenance.... He cared enough to make those things beautiful as well. So that we could not only appreciate the benefits of them, but we could also be blessed by the beauty of them too.
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| Sunset on the Beach |
Our final day at the beach was on Thanksgiving Day. I do feel a bit as if I missed Thanksgiving this year, but I wouldn't trade my nontraditional Thanksgiving for anything in the world. The weather was a bit cooler that day.... 65 I think. But on the beach it felt much warmer. The kids even swam in water so cold I felt like I couldn't even let it wash over my feet! We paid a RIDICULOUS amount of money for some sand toys, and they just built sand castles and used sand molds and ran in and out of the surf filling buckets of water....it was HEAVENLY!
For Thanksgiving "dinner" we patronized the only establishment open in that little beach town: 7-11. My mom & Aunt drove over and came back with a few salads, some Lunchables, two bags of chips, some cookies, and some sodas. It was the best food I'd ever tasted ;) That Thanksgiving Day and it's sand, sun, surf, and convenience store food will go down in my memory as one of my best!
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