Spring Break Baby......

Friday kicked off Spring Break for us, and needing a break myself I packed the kids up and headed south to Tampa Bay, and lucky for us Dave was already there for work so we had a hotel to bogart.
Here I am driving over Tampa Bay...



Day One: Clear Water Beach.
Beach towns are so fun. I love the Palm Trees, salty air, sea shells on the sidewalks, and moldy beach front restaurants. The kids and I got there early which was lucky for us because it didn't occur to me that it was Spring Break, duh, and that the beach would be packed. I in fact at one time wondered why all these people were at the beach on a Tuesday. Anyway, something interesting..the Gulf of Mexico has no waves. Weird to be in the Ocean with no waves but at least I didn't have to worry about the kids getting pulled under.

See this little knob....

Well, that little knob caused me so much grief it was incredible. Okay, story is, I bought a beach umbrella and sand anchor before I left. Acting like I knew how to use the anchor I twisted it into the sand stuck the umbrella in the hole and pushed up the umbrella...viola, we have shade. Nope. One wind gust and I was chasing that thing down the beach. Looking around I noticed everyone had umbrellas and thought that mine must have gotten caught in a terrible wind storm, so I put it back into the anchor pushed it open walked to the water. As my big toe hit the water I heard a scream and swung around to see my umbrella attacking a child. I ran as fast as I could yelling very naughty and extremely inappropriate words. Why did all the other umbrellas stay put but mine? So giving it one last go I slipped the pole into the anchor and sat down exhaustged. Warn out I looked over at the anchor and noticed the knobby crank thing. Oh, right...crank the crank to hold in the pole...right.

Pictures of the day....








Clear Water beach was so fun and I thought it was exceptionally neat that the restaurant we walked to for lunch was owned by some guy that was on Top Chef. It was good but I didn't understand why it had a mandatory 15% service charge on each ticket. The food was good but not good enough for me to pay a service charge to eat it...gasty!
As we were leaving the restarant I told Ben I had to carry him becuase he had bare feet, he asked me why they don't call them Zebra feet and I asked him what he meant to which he said "I'm not a Bear so why do they call them Bear feet, why not call them Zebra feet?" I had to giggle and then try to explain the craziness of the english language.