Spring Break :: Beaches, Burns and early morning wake-up calls

Monday was the last day of our trip.  So sad to see it end, but home we must go.

On our last day, we headed back to the beach.  After a lot of debate back and forth, Ross and I decided to try a new beach, St. Pete beach.  We researched the night before and thought it sounded good, the reviews said nice sand, so we headed south.  It was about an hour drive to the beach and once we arrived, paid for parking and headed onto the sand, it was again bad news.  Shells everywhere.  Bad sand.  Super windy.  Not what I wanted.

I whined and pouted a little, but I wanted to go back to Clearwater.  The thought of spending my last day of vacation on a bad beach had zero appeal.  Ross, being a good husband agreed to humor me so we packed up all our stuff and drove the long drive back up north to Clearwater.  We parked in the same place and went to the same stretch of beach we had been at days before.

It was beautiful.  Crowded, but the boys had so much fun and I had a great time relaxing with my husband, watching my kids.  It was pretty idyllic to tell you the truth.  Quiet conversations, lots of laughing and so much calm.

At one point, Wyatt had to go to the bathroom.  He would not pee in the ocean as directed by his father, so the three boys and I trekked the long walk to a very crowded bathroom.  It was there, looking in the mirror, that I realized the extent of the sunburn I'd been curating for a few days and man alive, I was cooked.





We also noticed as we walked the beach that Clearwater beach was just as covered in shells as all the other beaches we'd been to on vacation.  It seemed, apparently, that the small section of beach we were on was maybe the only section of beach on the whole coast NOT covered in sea shells.  Pretty crazy to tell you the truth.  We are truly spoiled with beautiful Southern California beaches and the beaches we visited don't hold a candle to Crystal Cove, California.

I digress.  We had such a lovely time, shells aside.





Once I was literally cooked and we'd eaten all our snacks, it was time to head back to the car and find some lunch.  BBQ chips on the beach weren't going to cut it.  We ate lunch at a hole in the wall Mexican grocery store near the beach and it was fantastic.  Elliott and I each only had 2 tacos - but both of us probably could have eaten four.

After lunch, we were all a little wiped out and sun stroked and it was very late in the day.  We headed back to the rental house to shower and clean up, soak our sunburns in lotion and start packing up.  Out of desperation we ended up at a drive through only Chick-fil-a for dinner and then made it back to our house to hit the hay.  We had an early wake up call.  4 am to be exact.  Early wake-up, early flight, early mini van drop off on Tuesday morning.