The Mooneys Flock to Florida

Greetings from sunny Florida!  We took advantage of Mike's week off + a happy almost 20 month old + a 25 week feeling good pregnant me and decided to head down to Florida to visit my aunt and uncle in Bonita Springs and get some much needed sun, warmth, and relaxation.

My aunt and uncle (as well as my cousin Jack and his fiancee Steph) moved down to Florida permanently about a year and a half ago and have given us an open invitation to come down and visit whenever we could make it.  Way back in August when Mike's vacation got moved to the last week of December, we decided we'd plan on coming down here if my 6 month pregnant self was up for the 16+ hour drive.  Well, I definitely was, so down here we went!

The drive down here took us about 3 hours longer than expected (thank the good Lord above for the iPad!)--we got caught in traffic between Gainesville and Tampa and didn't go more than 30mph for MILES.  It was awful.  We got in about 11pm on Saturday night, and we all crashed.

On Sunday we all slept in until 10am and then my cousin called and we decided to spend the day at Bonita Beach with them!  Patrick had been going absolutely crazy because my aunt and uncle's pool is literally RIGHT THERE in their house and he'd been dying to go in and go swimming.



So we loaded up the car and headed to the beach.  I really didn't know how Patrick would react to the beach, sand, and ocean...I was hoping he'd love it as much as he does the pool.  Yup.  I was right.  He absolutely LOVED it.  Screamed and cried and whined (oh, so much whining.  His new thing.  I'm not a fan) when we had to get out for lunch or when we packed up the car and headed home for a nap.  But boy, when he was THERE at the beach, he absolutely loved it.  Here are some of my favorite pics from our day at the beach--I am SO GLAD I was brave enough to bring my big Canon EOS 6D camera to the beach to capture these shots!  A'many of them WILL be framed ASAP.





















After the beach and naps (which I spent editing the ridiculous amounts of pics I took at the beach!) we headed to Coconut Jack's for dinner in Bonita Springs.  Oh my goodness, how delicious the coconut shrimp was that I had for dinner!  Definitely a favorite of mine--I just love sea food!  Patrick was pretty good at dinner, but again he got a bit whiny (seriously.  his new thing he developed like as soon as we got here!  I don't know if it's a combo of early "terrible 2s", molar teething?, very tired, a bit of dehydration, sun exhaustion, or any/all of the combined, but he has definitely been Mr. Whiny Pants when he doesn't get his way.  Oyyyyy.  Not yet kid.  I'm not ready for this) so Steph took him out to look at the giant fish off of the back of the restaurant.


Patrick promptly fell asleep once we got back to my aunt and uncle's--and I followed suit right after him.  Mama was tireddddd.

This morning we got up and elected to just hang out around here--my cousin was heading up to Sanibel for the day, but we were so tired from our long drive not long ago we just wanted to hang here by the big pool...and that's exactly what we did!

We spent the entire morning at the big pool at the country club where my aunt and uncle live, and then headed to the playground across the parking lot from the pool.  Patrick had A BLAST, both in the pool and playground!  He finally managed to figure out how to swim/float on his own with his puddle jumper on, and it felt liberating just to let him go on his own without clinging to us seemingly every single minute.  




















After a quick lunch we all headed back to take a siesta--well, Mike and Patrick did, I spent it editing pics, emailing, and writing this blog :)

I'm sure I'll have another Florida post or two in the next few days...but wanted to post today about our first couple of days and the happenings this Mooney clan has been up to.  We sure are loving this warm Floridian sun down here...it's going to be very very hard to go back to cold and icy STL.  Ahh, I won't think about that right now...cause we're here for a couple more days still :)

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