Florida!

A few weeks ago, my mom and Sarah and I went on a week-long visit to Florida to visit my sister and brother-in-law. I must confess to a few panic attacks in the days leading up to the trip (what kind of mother only lets one kid go to Florida and sends the other kid to his grandparents'?**... why don't I have a birth certificate for Sarah?... [and most importantly] it's still (freakishly) wintery in Texas - what will we wear??). But as I might've expected, we had a marvelous time. And I was really hoping I could bring the boys back for another trip, but gosh-darn-it, my sister and her husband have up and decided to move back to Texas. I guess I'll forgive them.... as long as there is some free babysitting in store for us in the future!

Anyway, some highlights from our trip! You just couldn't wait!! (Okay, okay, feel free to skip the narration; the photos are the best part anyway...)

We flew out early Wednesday morning, and I wasn't sure how Sarah would handle the flight (the only other time she's flown was when she was five months old and couldn't care less), but she was a natural! She even fell asleep in my lap for, like, the first time EVER as we were beginning the descent. No flight jitters from this one!

After we arrived at Caroline and Alan's sweet little house and got ourselves settled in, we loaded back up in the car to find someplace to eat dinner. Although our hosts had planned on taking us to a fish place, we were delivered from the seafood fate by a random Food Truck gathering next door. (Sorry A & C; I don't mean any insult to your choice of restaurants...I'm sure that other place would've been great!)

Can I just say that I will never again taste food as marvelous as the "Capresedilla" that I had from the quesadilla truck? Wow. It was so amazingly wonderful. Definitely one for the Heavenly Buffet.

The next day, A & C took us to downtown Stuart, where all the rich and famous snowbirds spend outrageous amounts of money on clothes that appeared to have come from the set of The Golden Girls. It was actually a lot of fun to "prowl" the shops; us Cody women are nothing if not champion window shoppers. We didn't buy any clothing, but I did get suckered into buying a plush sea turtle for a Certain Someone who grabbed it out of a bin and then started singing soft lullabies to it.

We also got some ice cream. And if I'd been in charge of the itinerary, that would've happened every day of our trip. (I did what I could.)

As previously mentioned, C & A, or the Edwards, as I like to call them, have a really cute little house. Mom and I spent the whole week admiring all the different ways that Caroline (teamed up with her good buddies Pinterest and Goodwill) had made the place their own. In fact, we even made her take us to a few of the nearby Goodwills in the hopes that we might score something awesome, as she seems to do on a regular basis. Alas, a pair of Barbie horses were the most interesting things we came across, and Caroline made me put them back. :)

(This picture would've been better if the Edwards had faced the camera, but they were busy slaving away on our dinner. A yummy one, of course.) 

(Note that Sarah is perched on a really high chair; for the first two-thirds of our trip, this was as close to the floor as she would get while the dogs were in the room. On our first night there, her toes had an unfortunate encounter with Miller the English bulldog's tongue, and she refused to let that happen again. If I tried to set her down, she'd just stick her legs straight out and do that little climbing-up-a-person move that you'd think only cartoons are capable of.)

On Friday, Mom and Sarah and I were on our own, so we explored the Port St. Lucie area. Sarah was absolutely enthralled by this pelican that came and floated near to the pier; I think she would've watched him all day if we'd let her. Thank goodness those rails are close together...

We also discovered a local river cruise, where we got to see an alarming number of alligators, as well as turtles and various water birds.

Seriously, this was like, someone's BACKYARD! And I get stressed over fire ants....

Later that evening, the E's took us to a great pizza place. By this time, Sarah was really getting into the whole "only child" thing. Can you tell? Aunt "Bobo" may just be her favorite aunt on this side of the family....

This is yet another weird picture, but I didn't want you to think that dear old Alan wasn't there at all for our visit... (So now, you will instead think that he was indeed there - and that he had a goofy grin on his face the whole time. I'm going to let that happen.)

Speaking of people who wouldn't pose properly for the Mamarazzi...

On Saturday morning, the girls got pedicures. Except the Baby girl. She got to sit in my lap for an hour and watch all the weirdness that was happening to Momma's feet. As she paraded out of the salon afterwards, I could hear gasps of other customers, exclaiming, "I didn't even know there was a child in here!" Makes a pretty-toed Momma proud...

Midway through the trip, I decided it would help for Sarah to have a few toys to keep her mind off the dogs while we were relaxing on the Edwards' Florida porch (which is what we did for most of our trip, in truth - but gosh-darn-it I must've forgotten to take pictures of that...). So we found a megapack of Polly Pockets on clearance at Target, and then I spent the afternoon being asked to force them in and out of their tiny rubber clothes. I finally had the bright idea to find some fabric scraps of C's that would work as "blankets," and bam: Polly Pockets turned into babies, and suddenly this was something Sarah could play with.

And then Bobo turned the tiny dresses into puppets! The world will never be the same.

I know what you're thinking.

We were in Florida.

Where are the beach pictures???

TA-DA!!!!!

Losers that we are, we only went to the beach once, but it was a perfect once - in spite of the fact that Sarah still hates sand and the ocean. Once she discovered Caroline's beach chair, she was happy as a clam. (A clam that hates water and sand, of course.) Mom and Caroline had the best time getting knocked down by the waves, and Caroline helped me find some shells (and a recently-detached crab claw!) to bring back home. Good times.

We couldn't leave without seeing where Caroline works, so on Monday, we had breakfast at Caroline's restaurant. Don't look too closely at my omelet; it'll make you faint with envy. And although you can't quite tell from this photo, the restaurant is right across from the water, so it was a truly glorious view - and a wonderful way to spend the morning!

After that, we left Caroline and visited the Oceanographic Institute, mostly for the sake of the kid in our midst. I won't say that I didn't love it myself.

Here's another one of Uncle Alan. I think he became quite the fan of Diego while we were there. So if he starts randomly shouting, "Alrescate!," you'll know why.

But alas, the trip was soon over, and we headed back to the airport for the flight home. Sarah became an honorary TSA agent (just for walking through the metal detector! man, they have the worst screening process...), and then promptly decided that she needed her own seat this time.

An uneventful (but long) flight later, we found ourselves back home and ready to see the boys, read the sea animal books that I'd brought back, and hear about all the adventures from Grandad and DD's house.

**Incidentally, Luke had a fab. u. lous. time with Grandad and DD. I'm still hearing stories about it: "One day, when Grandad and DD and I were just drivin' around, we saw a big asphalt truck." and "Jamie [Luke's cousin] is a little farmer boy. I'm a little - um, a big - golfer boy." (Because Jamie lives on a farm, and Luke lives on a golf course, naturally.)