This year's Florida trip started out as quite the adventure. Tyler was gone in Orlando for the week for work, so the packing and prepping was left up to me. Thankfully, my school was on Spring Break that week, so I had plenty of extra time to get ready. The big debate centered around whether Tyler should fly all the way home on Friday just to turn back around and drive to Florida. He could have just flown from Orlando straight to Pensacola. There was also talk of him flying to Nashville and meeting up with us there (where we stay overnight to break up the drive). Thankfully, he took the least ideal option and flew all the way home on Friday. The reason it worked out so well is because there was a massive storm heading our way on Friday and it would have been terrifying to do that drive alone. Tyler's plane landed and he had just enough time to rush home, drop his bag from the week in Orlando, and grab a few items to throw into his next suitcase. We hit the road immediately in the hopes that we'd outrun the storm. We made it through most of Illinois with the storms following right behind us, but we hit REALLY bad weather in southern Illinois that night. It was awful and I'm so glad that Tyler was driving and got us through it!
Our Saturday drive was fairly smooth and we ran into just a little bit of our usual Alabama traffic. We made it to the house mid-day and immediately fell into vacation mode. The house we stayed in was amazing and we had a wonderful week. We were just a block from the beach, had a pool of our own, and were right around the corner from a public park with basketball and tennis. We had beautiful weather all week and enjoyed all of the fresh air and time outside. One of the highlights from the week was having the Evans family there for a few days. Vacationing is always more fun with friends! We also had a blast seeing the Blue Angels practice. It took three days of driving out to the viewing spot...practices kept getting cancelled due to cloud cover. It was okay, though, because the viewing spot was right next to Fort Pickens, which was really neat to tour. The drive to the viewing spot along the national seashore is also super scenic, so we enjoyed that the three times we did it! Other than that, we simply enjoyed the chance to relax, have family time, and be away from the hustle and bustle at home. We definitely treasure this yearly tradition and hope we can keep it up for several more years!
