Spring Break

Last week was Spring break.

Beanie attends a Montessori school, however, they do follow the local school calendar for holidays and breaks, other than summer where her school only closes for 2 weeks.

Last year I was very late in planning for spring break. We did travel but it all quite last minute and I paid a pretty packet for the hotel.  Lesson learned! So, last Oct I was foresighted enough to book a hotel for this year's break. We decided to go to FL, given Beanie loves the beach and our Atlantic beach experience last year was not very great, due to it being cold and gray.

It is a 5 1/2 hour drive to the closest FL beach, so with stops were were looking at about 7 1/2 hrs. I borrowed a DVD player from a friend which helped keep Beanie busy during the drive.

We left home at about 10 am on Tue, stopped for a nice lunch about 2 hrs into the drive, and then  drove the rest of the way with one rest stop. The drive was really nice, and quite relaxing since the route we took was fairly rural with very pretty countryside and not much traffic. We checked in about 5pm and immediately changed and went to the beach which was about 10 min away.

We found good beach parking with showers and restrooms. The beach was not too crowded since it was later in the day. Beanie had a blast paying in the sand. There were double red flags so we could not even touch the water - too rough with riptides :-(

Then we came back to the hotel where Beanie wanted to dip her feet in the hot tub, finally we went for dinner. It was late almost 9pm, and Beanie was exhausted.  We all slept really well that night!

Next day was supposed to be stormy. It was gray and dull but no rain in the AM, so after breakfast Beanie enjoyed playing in the hotel pool for an hour or so. They had a one foot pool for toddlers which was perfect for her. She could play and I did not have to worry about older kids jumping and I did not have to get in the water with her. She had a blast!  Later, we went to a local outlet mall which was a bit of a letdown, so we came back, picked up pizza and got to the hotel just before the rain/wind arrived. That evening the weather improved and Beanie was back at the pool. She made friends with a little girl and after playing for a while, we got cleaned up and went to dinner. There was a nice pavilion with restaurants, boutiques, etc within walking distance of the hotel.

The last day the weather was sunny, but a bit cool. We spent the morning at a nearby waterfront wharf/village. It was really fun - it had a playground, an outdoor carousal (Beanie was beyond thrilled), restaurant and lots of activities for older kids, such as, zip lining, etc. We hung there for the morning, had lunch and headed back. Later in the afternoon we went back to the beach. This time we saw one red flag and one purple, which meant we could go in the water up to our knees but needed to look out for jelly fish, or as Beanie called them sea creatures (lol).  We were finally able to go in the water - it would have been awful if we went all that way and had not been able to!

Beanie played and we built sand castles and had a blast. She is really good about going up to kids and asking to play with them. Being an only child she seeks out their kids and I am so proud how she is confident to go up to older kids too, as in 7-8 year old. There was another girl about 6 yrs old playing by herself so soon Beanie latched on to her. The other kids was happy to have someone to play with, so it was nice. I chatted with that girls Mom and they were from our state too.

After the beach we headed back to the hotel, played in the pool a bit. Cleaned up and went to dinner.

Next morning (Fri) after breakfast we headed back home.

It was a nice break for us all (my parents came too!). Beanie had a blast and got lots of treats and over indulged on everything - that is what vacations are for after all :-)

Now we are back home and back to school/work.