Florida- a trip to remember!

Or FlordIA as Ellie would spell it. :)

After posting all these photos (which I began doing a few days ago and just finished)....I realized I probably should've separated the posts into a couple day segments. But, this is already done, so be prepared for a long one.

We went to Champaign church for a wedding that everyone was invited to..except for me and Larissa, and left right after the reception at about 4pm on Sunday. Here we are, white as ghosts ready for the long road trip!

We drove for about 6-7hrs and then stopped near Nashville. We got up at 3:30 to start driving again on Monday. I got to be the first driver, and I was surprisingly very awake. Brooke the morning person was my co-pilot.
We picked up Brittney in Sarasota, and arrived at our rental house around 6ish. We ordered pizza, and some went to Wal-Mart and bought a ton of groceries for the week.

Of course on Tuesday which was our first full day, we were at the beach all day. I don't think you'd want to see those pictures. :)

Enjoying the beach on the 2nd night we were there.



Beautiful sunset. We saw dolphins on this night too.


2nd day, we of course were at the beach again all day. :) That night we went to a wonderful seafood restaurant that looked out onto the bay. We ate on an outside porch like area. It was so pretty.

We all had amazing food, and I think everyone ate or ordered something they never would've thought they would! Including myself! :)
They had a little shopping area by the restaurant. Ellie, (the 12 year boy is actually her new name :)... just had to ride this bull. She actually thought it was going to be a scary ride, but she was a bit disappointed.
We had gone to a beach in Marco Island that day, and there were tonsss of crabs! Larissa & I were walking barefoot and saw swarms of them, so we quickly ran back to our stuff. We later found this sign! :) Life is a beach... watch out for the crabs!

I have to note here that we also got chased by birds that day too. When we got our lunch out, they were seriously surrounding us and they loved us the rest of the day. I'm sure it was a sight to see girls running around screaming and laughing. :)
We had a dishwasher explosion.. A couple girls(I won't say names :) put Dawn soap in the dishwasher because we didn't have any dishwasher detergent. This happened every time we ran the dishwasher after this... so we got to wash all our dishes by hand for the week.

We had beautiful weather all week. One morning we all went rollerblading/biking before breakfast. It was a gorgeous morning, and then it rained in the afternoon. That's all the rain we saw all week!
We went to the beach with our rollerblades and bikes(we lived about 1 mile from the beach), and ran into this interesting guy, who needed a picture with us for some promotion or something. :)
Our house with the lovely mini-van and car top carrier
After our exercise that morning, we relaxed, and then went shopping at a huge outlet mall.

We then met Ellie's Grandma & Grandpa, Don & Velma Hoerr for dinner. It was delicious.

We went back to their condo afterwards and hung out...
...had dessert and coffee...
..and played some games.
Hanging out. Larissa is holding Psych.. because that's pretty much all we ever watched. :)

Larissa and I decided we wanted to go through a drive-thru with our rollerblades. So one morning we went off to Starbucks, but they had no drive-thru. We then debated if it would be better to go inside with our socks or blades. We decided to go inside stockin' -footed. :) I don't think anyone even noticed. Then we rollerbladed back home across busy intersections, holding several coffee drinks in our hands. Fun Times. :)

This was an adventurous day. We had a kayak in the yard of our house, and we really wanted to use it. But... we had no idea how we should get it TO the beach. We found these wheels on an axle, and tied the kayak onto it. Then we proceeded to haul it for 1 1/4 miles to a little bay area. It worked great, and it wasn't even that much work hauling it! We did get some reallly weird looks though. I can't imagine why. :)
Brittney, Larissa, and Brooke went first. It was so beautiful. We almost felt like we were in Venice. :)
The bay went into a part by the actual ocean where we were hanging out, so we met them.. and then Kendra and I went with Brooke. So much fun. But then we had to haul it all the way back home again when were done.

It was pretty chilly on the beach that day, so it felt good to Kayak. We left the beach pretty early because some of us were covered in towels we were so cold. :) It was only 63 degrees and windy, but sunny! :)

So, since we left the beach early... we went to another beach that had a pier. It was gorgeous.

This girls are sooo entertaining and fun!
I looove her.

I just deleted one of my favorite sunset pictures.. I guess I'll have to upload it later.

We went mini-golfing after the sunset. Sorry about the pictures.. I couldn't get them to turn out very well....they're all kind of dark.


Don't ask me what we're doing.

We headed home to cook dinner. We had stir fry... and it looked and tasted amazing, if I may say so myself. :)

Every night we had dessert and then we each took turns doing bible studies. They were all very good.
The night before (we thought) we were leaving. Britt, Joy, and I, went and swept and cleaned out the van.... and then treated ourselves to Starbucks.

The last night was fun.. we hung out and took our time and made dinner. Here are our kabobs that we had to do on the skillet because I think the grill was out of gas.

Some cooks.. No one ever was "in charge" of the meal. We just all pitched in whenever we wanted to. Like some things got over seasoned or salted, because we didn't know the other person had done it.

But... on Sunday morning we got news that the weather was going to be really bad in Atlanta around the time we were planning on driving through it. Our plan was to leave right after church on Sunday and drive about 8 hours. But we decided to stay a couple extra nights, even though our rented time for our house was up. We loaded up our stuff and headed church... pretty much stranded in Florida with no place to go. (although we did know we always had Ellie's grandparents :).
In front of Fort Myers church...NOW pretty excited to stay a few extra days!

We found out that Brittney's flight was cancelled too... so she got to stay there with us!

We hung out at Don & Velma's after church... except I personally took a nap. :)
Then we went out to eat at an ammaazing Italian restaurant. I just loved it.
Then we went back to Don & Velma's and went hot tubbing...
.. and played funny bones for their entertainment(we played it almost every day...)

Everyone in Fort Myers was soo friendly, and many people offered to keep us! Bev & Ed Gerber from Rockville ended up keeping 4 girls, and then Ellie, Kendra, Britt, and I all stayed at Don & Velma's. But we all went to Bev & Ed's for a lovely breakfast Monday morning in their gorgeous home:

Then we went to World Market to shop around. Such a neat store... I bought lots of stuff for my family there.
Us and all our purchases.

We hung out at the pool that afternoon and signed t-shirts we had boughten. We said goodbye to Brittney.... then we all got ready and went to the beach for our REAL last night this time!

We went to Warren & Margaret Gottier's, also from Rockville for dinner. They had a beautiful home, and they have traveled to over 140 countries MULTIPLE times.

Our dinner table... (Ed & Bev and Don & Velma came too, but aren't pictured)
Their lovely home included this knight from Spain. Let's just say we had fun taking pictures with this cool thing.
Then he took the helmet off and put it on himself, and then each one of us.
oh, Ellie and Michelle....
Warren showed us some of his slides from all over the world. So cool. I would love to be a world traveler. Here's the whole group.

Tuesday night we stayed at the houses we did before, and left at 4am on Tuesday morning, hoping to drive straight through without stopping.

We made it through Atalanta which was absolutely horrible. They really need to invest in snowplows. But, right outside Atlanta...
...this happened. No, surprisingly the van was not full of screaming girls... I think that was just me and Joy. :)

We spun around in two lanes of traffic after hitting tons of slush and losing control(thank goodness for no cars in those at all!) and went backwards into the ditch. Praise the Lord, the van and us were all fine, but maybe a little awed that this had just happened. We had the EMT'S, fireman, police, tow truck.... everything there to help us.

I just wonder what people thought when they saw us 7 girls with a mini-van with a car top carrier. :)
Getting old black pulled out. It was sooo muddy. We actually tried pushing it out ourselves at first... but that didn't work.

The tow truck guy then told us we should stop in TN. Much to our dismay, we did. We had a good time in the hotel though that night.. just thankful we were all still alive. :) We got up at 5:30 on Wednesday morning to keep moving on our journey. We were all getting a little anxious in the car, that's for sure. Even though none of us got sick of each other, and we all were having a great time.... I don't think we've ever been so glad to see that GOODFIELD sign!

So that's the end of our WONDERFUL FLORIDA trip. After going on a walk tonight in the freezing cold, I just wish I could go back to the lovely warm walks on the beach. I didn't know Larissa or Brooke at all, and I got to know them SO well! And as for the rest... they were already my good friends, but there's nothing like going on a trip with them. We said after going in the ditch... "If this doesn't build relationships, I don't know what does!"

We have probably a thousand photos, and an hour worth of videos. Crazy I know. These are only a few favorites/highlights from just my camera.

I just had an amazing time on my first girl trip. I love every single one of these girls MUCHO!!

...and by the way, if you're still reading this... wow. You are one dedicated blog reader. I think this is the longest post I've ever written. It's taken me like a week to write it.