Beach Day

 We went to Fort Desoto Beach Park on the advice of a old, good friend of mine, Joshua Lansing.  He lives in St. Petersburg now.....we were neighbors in Quincy when I was real young.  Anyway, we got there early enough to beat the five mile line that we saw on our way out later in the day!  The weather started out kinda overcast but cleared up beautifully!  So much so that Jeremy got burnt beautifully!! haha!

This is on top of Fort Desoto.  We ate lunch down below it at a little beach gift shop/food stand.  We both had the California Pita.  Hahaha!  And fresh squeezed lemonade! YES!

Jeremy bought these sunglasses at the gift shop.  He had forgotten his and really needed a pair.  We hiked all along this beach.  We found a ton of shells to take back to the kids!!  We did buy a few of the brightly colored ones for them but otherwise we did good! 

 I love shell hunting! And since we have gotten back the kids have really enjoyed playing with them!  Especially Asher and Cedric.  All of them had fun getting all the shells into our sand and water table(which was empty), filling it up with water, and washing all the beach sand off of them.  We had sand everywhere for days and days!! haha!

 Look Mom, The Griswalds made it too!!  

This is my pre-poop picture!!

A pier full of pelicans. 

 There is a dolphin in this picture.  Not that you can tell. 

 This dolphin wouldn't communicate with me at all.  I tried and tried. 

This is where the loose boweled bird decided to take a nice fat crap right on the front of my new dress!  I didn't get as annoyed as I could have because I was having an otherwise spectacular day!!  

We played in the ocean a lot too!  It was the perfect temperature.  The sand was awesome.  About an hour into our beach laying the waves really started to pick up and then it was really fun!!!  I got knocked over a few times which was both hilarious and fun....as well as frightening and traumatizing!! lol!  I am petrified of the things that live in the ocean.  Both big and small.  And there were signs everywhere warning of the poisonous stingray and how to avoid it! AGH!  I didn't see one that day but later on.......

When we got back to the hotel after the beach I started to bum out because they were warning the whole state about Tropical Storm Beryl.  Which happened to be the first named storm to make landfall in Florida in May in over 100 years!  Joy. It was hitting on the opposite coast but they expected the storm to reach all of Florida and Georgia. It started to cloud up a bit and I thought our whole trip was ruined.  But, next thing you know.....a rainbow appeared for about 30 whole seconds right in front of me!!!  It was seriously the coolest thing ever!  It hadn't rained or anything, it just popped up.  I snapped a few shots and decided to change my attitude around!! It worked!! 
We ordered Crabby Bill's through room service that night for supper.  I absolutely love room service!  It was really good again!  There was also a memorial day celebration going on all day at our hotel that we did when we got back from the beach.  We hung out and listened to the music a bit....it was a real party going on there! haha!  We hung out on the pier awhile and enjoyed the sunset.  Really good times. And so ended our first full day in Tampa.