Beautiful Weather

Well, it seems like we're finally caught up from vacation. Laundry is finished and put away, house is cleaned, and we're both back to our regular routines. I miss Florida a lot actually - it was just so relaxing and fun and beautiful. I really, really enjoyed it and now it's making summer vacation a top "want" on my list right now. Thankfully the weather has been beautiful outside recently - high 70's/low 80's for the end of March and we've been taking advantage of it! Even Tyson was worn out by Sunday! (Picture below. :)) I started track last week and we have our first meet April 9th. This may be my last year for track for the time being; I had an interview yesterday at Drake to start my Masters in the Fall so fingers crossed I am accepted and can begin that journey! I find out in about 2-3 weeks so I'll keep everyone posted. Other than that I'm just counting down until summer vacation (37 days) and we've just been enjoying the weather back home in Iowa!

We're Back!

We're back! After 5 glorious days of vacation in Florida and Key West, Josh and I finally made it home today. It's kind of bittersweet to be home - I am glad to be able to sleep in my own bed, see my puppers, and the weather was so nice today we opened up all the windows and have been unpacking. What I'm not looking forward to is likely the mound of work to do at work tomorrow. :( I should have gone in this afternoon once I got home...but I just couldn't make myself do it haha. Oh well, it'll be there tomorrow when I get there, no biggie.

I'll give you all a play-by-play of the vacation days. So be ready for a long post!

DAY 1 - March 13th.

We woke up on Tuesday at about 3:15 a.m. (yikes!) Thankfully we had basically everything packed - I just needed to brush teeth, put on some make-up and get the last minute necessities like toothbrushes, toothpaste, contacts, etc. So we packed up and right when we were getting ready to go, my car wouldn't start. Come to find out, the extra key I have is just in case I lock my keys in my car; it doesn't have the special chip to start the car (need to do that ASAP!). So I had to run down to my parent's house and swap out keys at 4:15. We finally got on the road and made it to the airport at about 5:00a.m. We had no problem checking in, we were the only ones in line. Once we got up to the top of the escalators though going into the airport...holy moly. The line to get through security was intense. It was starting to give me some anxiety once we got in line. But, it started moving fairly quickly and our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 5:45 a.m. So we get up to the security at about 5:25 and right as we're putting our bags and things in the bins, they actually call our NAMES over the airport intercom that our flight was ready to leave and we needed to report immediately to the gate. Talk about STRESS!! We were slightly freaking out, and I was throwing things out of the way to get there. We did a "Home Alone" scene where we were running down the airport trying to make our flight. We did make it though and flew out with little problems from Des Moines to Milwaukee and then straight to Ft. Myers.

Once we got to Ft. Myers Josh's Grandma and Grandpa Meckley picked us up and we went to Cracker Barrel and had lunch. After that we went back to their place in Bonita Springs and met Andy since he was also in town on vacation. Andy, Josh and myself drove down to Naples then and went to the pier, where I got to see some dolphins coming up to the pier and out of the water, seagulls diving for fish, and lots of old guys in speedos! haha. It was really nice though, I wish I would have grabbed some photos the first day but I didn't get a chance to. Then we went back to his grandma and grandpas and all of us went out to eat at Perkins. Andy had to go back to Orlando since his flight left the following morning, so Josh's aunt Marsha came and picked us up and we went to Naples to stay with her and Josh's uncle Bruce. Their house is literally beautiful and out back it sits on the bay and apparently you can see dolphins jumping out there too. I didn't get a chance to see any, but it was amazing nonetheless. We went to bed fairly early since we were heading to Key West at 7:30a.m. on Wednesday morning and we were pretty tired! It's very hard to sleep on those airplanes! :)

Day 2 - Key West
We woke up early and started the journey with the Petermeiers (which included Craig, Virg, Lindsay, JC, Colby, Jake P. and Jake R.). We drove two vehicles and drove the 6ish hours down to Key West. It was an interesting drive since you drive by the Florida Everglades. I got to see some big gators! And anyone who knows me knows that gators and I have a love-hate relationship. (They'd love to eat me...I love to hate them). It was neat.

Then driving over all the bridges through the Keys was beautiful and breathtaking. The Gulf was just so beautiful. The Keys are definitely just tiny little towns more geared towards tourists, but it was very beautiful. We stopped at a nice little restaurant and I had the coconut shrimp and it was delicious! (My first taste of the amazing seafood down there).
The view from the restaurant:

All of us ready to eat:

Then we continued on and made it to Key West where we stayed at Ocean Key Hotel, which is right on the tip of Key West and up against the water - it was really pretty! We were all pretty amped up so we headed straight to the hotel restaurant bar.
The view from the hotel:

The boys:

All of us:

We then got all dressed up and went to this AMAZING restaurant called Louie's Backyard. It was SO, SO, SO, SO, SO delicious. I had the shrimp and Josh had the scallops and they were seriously melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Virg let us try some of her hogfish and it was soooo good. I also got some dessert and there was nothing there that wasn't to die for. Ugh. So good. I got so full I actually sobered up haha. BUT, we went out instead. J.C. had actually lost his I.D. before we went out to eat so he wasn't able to hit up the Duval Street bars, which sucked. But we all made the best of it and didn't get home until 3:30 a.m.
All pretty before going out: (there's that pretty dress from Ireland!<3)


Sloppy Joe's!:

At Fat Tuesdays:

Day 3 - Key West
THIS was how we felt the morning after we went out:

haha. But we got up and went to Blue Heaven outside restaurant. We had some Belinis to start the day (orange juice, champagne, and schnapps) so we got to start over. We then walked down Duval Street and got some souvenirs: I got a Key West Christmas ornament, and we picked up some knick-knack stuff. It was pretty fun. We didn't do much this day, shopped a bit, went to the pool and hung out, and then went out to eat at the original Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville. It was, of course, really good. Josh and I had gone when we went to Vegas, but going to the original one was really neat. We picked up some beach towels and I got a keychain at the Margaritaville shop. (And we had margaritas haha).



Then we just went home and watched ISU beat UConn that night. (YAY!) We did buy some 1/2 pound chocolate chip cookies though - DELICIOUS. We didn't go out since we knew we'd have to get up and drive the 6 hours home the next morning. Blah.

Day 4 - Heading back to Naples
We got up and went to the hotel breakfast on Friday morning and it had rained a little bit in the morning. The CRAZY thing about Key West is that there are freaking chickens and roosters EVERYWHERE! So they were waking me up because they would doodle all morning long. Yuck.
View from our hotel balcony:

So we went to breakfast and it was so beautiful. The weather all day while we were down in Florida was amazing (I hear it was amazing here too), but there was even a little rainbow over the ocean. So, so, so beautiful; it was hard to know we were leaving.
View from breakfast:

We drove the 6ish hours back home after that. We did get to stop and see some gators up close (which is where the picture above came from) so that was neat! Josh and I then went back to Bruce & Marsha's and she made dinner for us and his grandma and grandpa came back down to eat. She made grouper, stone crab, and shrimp and all of it was DELICIOUS. We ate up the seafood while we were down there - the fish was actually amazing. And Marsha is an excellent cook so it was all very delicious - I don't have one complaint about the food. We were pretty exhausted from the trip that day so we went to bed early again.

Day 5 - Keewaydin
Josh's aunt & uncle have some land and a cabin on this island called Keewaydin that you can only get to by boat. So we rented a boat and all 11 of us took off for the island at about 9a.m. the next day. We drove up the channel and it was about a 40 minute boat ride. We pulled up to the dock and grabbed all of our stuff. We weren't sure what to expect because I knew it didn't have any running water, no electricity, and was basically on this island full if iguanas, armadillos, and random island inhabitants. We got off on the channel (which is kind of that brackish Florida water that the gators like - kind of dark and murky), walked up to the cabin and it was the CUTEST little yellow cabin. It was so homely and all the palm trees around it were beautiful. You kind of then walked forward and over this little hill and I'm not kidding, the view was breathtaking. I wanted to get so many pictures it was just so beautiful. It was white sand, the gulf was green/blueish and there were clouds and sailboats in the background. It literally looked like a post card. I'll let the pictures do the talking, but it was so amazing:




The cabin:

An iguana!:

Some of us just sitting around:

All of us in front of the cabin with a tortoise we found!:

It was literally a little slice of heaven. It was breathtakingly beautiful. We ended up staying on the island until about 5ish and then went home, showered, ate some dinner, then went over to the Petermeier's to watch the ISU game (booo Kentucky!). And although we would have loved to have put all of our green attire on and head down 5th Ave in Naples, we knew better when we needed to be up by 4:45 a.m. to catch our 6:30 a.m. flight. So Josh and I went home, woke up the next morning and flew home.

And here we are. :) It was definitely a memorable trip - so nice to see family, spend time with everyone, and get to have the time of our life with our really good friends. I wouldn't change a thing about the trip - and Josh was already saying, "Next year if we go back..." so perhaps we could make a little get-away out of this for a few years to come. The doggies sure did miss us though! And now I am going straight to bed! Glad to be home, and now the countdown begins until summer!

Time Flies

Wow! Where has the time gone? I knew that the last two weeks of mine would be crazy, but it feels like life has finally caught up to the madness that I was enduring. For the past two weeks I've had classes until about 9 p.m. for every night except Fridays. On top of all of the school work and checking of papers I have to do, and planning for my sub since I will be gone almost all of next week, I could say that I am slightly stressed but I don't feel it yet. Soon though, I'm sure. I am going to start packing tonight and then slowly all week add things so I'm not forgetting. Our flight leaves pretty early for Florida on Tuesday the 13th, so I won't be able to wake up and get anything I don't need. It will probably be a chore just getting Josh up since he hates mornings, but it will be worth it since we'll be able to spend all day down in Florida. Our flight leaves at 6 a.m. on Tuesday and we get to Florida around noon. I am pretty excited to see Josh's family and all of the Everglades and Key West. It will be a LOT of fun, I can just feel it. :)

This weekend I'll need to finish off my list of shopping to get everything ready. Track will start the Monday I get back, so I'd like to have everything in order when I get back on Monday as well. I'll probably need to come to work on Sunday to get some things laid out, but hopefully it's not too big of a deal. I'm sure the next two months will fly by and then it will be Summer vacation and I can FINALLY slow down and enjoy some time. But until then, I think it will be go-go-go.

I will definitely post some pictures when we get back. Seems like this week is full too so I probably won't be able to update again before we leave. Plus, my update would only tell you how excited I am to go on vacation, so just know that when I'm not posting haha. Tonight I am getting a mani/pedi, tomorrow night I am planning for the week I'm gone (plus it's suppose to be around 70 degrees tomorrrow so I'm hoping to get out of here early and take the dogs on a walk!), Wednesday I have a track meeting, Thursday I'm going to Trace Adkins with my mom (yee haw!), and then Friday I'll be able to unwind and take some time. Josh and I are also on a strict diet this week, so hopefully I don't succumb to a Casey's ham and cheese sandwich this week! (YUMMMM). Other than that I'm sure the next two months are going to fly by and then it'll already be May and almost time for school to be out. Yipee! I'll update everyone on the trip once we get back in two weeks! :) Love you all!