One day in December, one of my roommates, Paige, texted me and my friends and told us she found a sale on cheap flights to Florida. The sale only lasted until that night, so if we wanted to go, we had to act fast. After a lot of deliberation and a group meeting, me and 4 others ended up with plane tickets later that night. (only $118 round trip!!) It was really the ideal itinerary, fly out early morning, fly back late at night, and direct flights both ways! Our trip was 5 days long
When we arrived in Florida, my grandpa picked us up at the airport. (we stayed at my grandparents house on the water in Fort Myers). After we dropped our things at the house, we went to Publix to get some groceries for the week. Later on, Paige told us about how when she was younger and she would go on vacation she always hated arriving at the beach and having to go straight to the grocery store. She fantasized about the day she would get to travel with friends and they would go straight to the beach rather than the grocery store...sorry Paige. After grocery shopping we were starving because of waking up at o'dark thirty to travel, so we got some McDonald's. We didn't want to eat inside and the picnic tables they had outside were in the shade, so we sat on the curb.
My grandma borrowed her boss' car for the week so that we could drive her car...My grandma and grandpa have 4 Maltese dogs whom they love VERY much. Pictures of these dogs are framed inside the house as well. When my friends saw this on the front of the car, they realized their hopes of finding a Florida bae had been crushed.
(view while eating McDonald's on curb)
Once we got back from grocery shopping, we all took naps. After that, we decided to go to Sanibel Island to explore a little. It was a little too breezy to lay on the beach so we just went in our clothes to walk around some!
"Paige be vogue!!!"
I was scoping out the perfect person to take our picture on the beach with my camera. I finally found the perfect candidate- a woman walking with her husband who also had a Nikon hanging around her neck. I asked her and she kind of looked at me, then rattled off a few words in another language to her husband...of course I picked someone who didn't speak English, but hey! Turned out nice :)
This picture perfectly sums up Hayley and Olivia. I held the camera up to take a picture, Olivia gets ready to pose next to Hayley, Hayley drops down in the splits. Typical.
Can't help but love Olivia's reaction though
What was originally supposed to happen...
Sanibel's beaches are mostly made up of broken shells, so pretty!
We left Sanibel to head to the causeway to sit at these picnic tables and eat our Oreos that we had packed to eat on the beach
Paige was feeling pretty unsure about the seagulls that were circling around us while we ate, as you can see by the look on her face...
Paige celebrating the fact that she finished her pack of Oreos in about 60 seconds...
As Paige was celebrating, a seagull pooped on her hand that is cut out of the picture. Immediate screaming and running (by Paige) and crying of laughter (by the rest of us) ensued...priceless
Paige looking a little frazzled after such a traumatic experience...
After everything settled down, Paige realized that she left her phone on the picnic table in the midst of all the chaos, so Hayley and Paige decided to brave the seagulls and run back for the phone
Thursday, our second day, was our first beach day! We had gorgeous weather that day
This is the beach version of an ice cream truck!
While on a walk, Hayley found this crab and decided to carry it all the way back to our towels. She was very fascinated by it
Trying to get the crab to come out of its shell onto her hand...
It never did come out. Finally Hayley decided to take it back to the water. We weren't paying attention and when we looked up, Hayley is CHUCKING this crab into the ocean.
We packed lunches for the beach everyday!
As if we hadn't already experience enough with seagulls, I was sitting on the beach eating some wheat thins when a seagull swooped down and STOLE THE CRACKER OUT OF MY HAND AS I WAS PUTTING IT IN MY MOUTH!!! Also, the next day, Olivia was eating her sandwich, and a seagull swooped down and took a bite out of her sandwich, then proceeded to take my ENTIRE bag of wheat thins out of our snack bag and try to fly off with it! Paige chased the bird, and it reluctantly dropped the crackers. Pretty much everyone on the beach within half a mile radius was staring at us because of all the screaming and running around.
We ate dinner on the water after the beach on Thursday! It was super pretty.
It was a little rainy/overcast Friday morning, so we decided to go to the outlets before the beach. We packed our lunch and ended up eating on the curb again at the outlets because there were no picnic tables.
We piled on Olivia to take the picture shown above, and she couldn't breathe very well. I accidentally took this picture, where you can see little tears in her eyes. Oopsie
Friday night when we got to the beach after the outlets, we were mainly there to watch the sunset.
We also went on a walk, and me and Hayley tried to do that heart thing that you see on tumblr/Pinterest/etc, and well, it didn't exactly work. Here's our best attempt
We didn't make this, although I'd like to take credit for it
Paige thought it would be fun to fight someone in the sand, in her clothes. Hayley willingly volunteered. Her are some pics of the fight
When we came back from our walk, we found Olivia making this little...sand mound. Not really sure what it is, but she's cute
We thought Paige looked like a mom, taking pictures of Hayley posing with the Florida sand art
Gotta get all angles...
We came for the sunset and this cloud blocked it the whole time...we had a fun night nevertheless
We went to Sweet Tomatoes that night for dinner. One of my favorite places to go when I'm in Florida. My family can attest. I took this picture of my soup for them because it looked like a smiley face. Miss you family!!
Got a picture with grandma before heading to the beach on Saturday! We got one with grandpa too, but grandma kind of cut off Anna and Grandpa's heads
Me and Hayley had to take a picture of our fancy water bottles
We braved the water for the first time on Saturday, it was freezing, but once your body was numb it wasn't so bad!
I saw this huge cactus when we were walking and had to take a picture! I absolutely love cacti and succulents!
We wanted ice cream the whole time we were in Florida, and we finally got some on Saturday! I had Cappuccino Chip and it was delish
After ice cream, on the walk back to the car, Paige somehow coaxed me and Olivia into promising that we would watch the Lego Movie sometime this semester. She really loves that movie. She even made us pinky finger thumb that we would. (that's what is happening here)
Me and Olivia couldn't stop laughing. Paige was taking this promise very seriously
Paige explaining the movie
We saw something floating in the water while we were eating lunch on Sunday and Hayley was convinced that it was an animal of some kind, we went out to see what it was with my grandpa's binoculars
It was a coconut
On Sunday after lunch and naps/being lazy, we wanted something to do before our trip was over (it wasn't good beach weather) so we decided to go to the Manatee Park!
Watching the manatees
That little speck in the middle of the picture is a manatee nose, although you can't tell in pictures. We saw about 8 or 9 manatees total! I wasn't expecting to see that many, if any at all, but they were all right in this cove when we walked in!
Hayley was on Cloud 9 seeing the manatees. While it was fun and gave us something to do, you can only look at manatees for so long. While we were looking at the manatees Hayley said she could "do this for hours"
This cockroach was dead and stuck in the holes of the curtain in mine and Anna's room. I decided it was best if I just left it there.
We ate at a really good restaurant called Mission BBQ on Saturday night! As soon as we got there, there was a tornado warning, but the restaurant didn't make us go to shelter or anything.
Driving home in the tornado warning! The streets were pretty flooded and it was pretty bad weather! A tornado actually hit cape coral which is just a little bit south of Fort Myers.
Heading home! We were happy to have a late flight out of Florida so that we got a full day, but not happy to get back to campus so late.
Paige was the last person in Florida because she was the last to board the plane. The guy behind Paige wasn't happy that I stopped to take a picture as we were boarding. You win some you lose some
And a big ole WELCOME BACK from IWU. Me and my friends parked in teacher parking when we got back to campus at 1am because:
1. It took double the time to get to campus from Anna's house that it should have because of bad roads
2. It was freezing cold
3. There were no parking spots, except maybe accross campus (didn't want to walk across campus at 1am)
4. It was 1am
5. We thought there was a grace week.
So, here we are, $100 in parking tickets between the 5 of us.
