Miami!

Josh and I went to Miami to visit Anna and John for our vacation. We were there from the 23rd through the 29th of May. Yes, we were there during the "zombie attack". Crazy!

Anna picked us up from the airport on Wednesday. We went to pick John up for work then headed to Wet Willie's for dinner and drinks. YUM! We went to South Beach next. I enjoyed it much better than the last time we went (Spring Break last year). It was beautiful, the weather was perfect and it wasn't very crowded. We relaxed, caught up and did some people watching. After that we went back to their place. They had just moved last year when we visited, so it was nice to see how they've decorated their apartment! We chatted a lot, made plans for the rest of the week, took Carter out to play (he made a new Pit friend :-), of course this made me miss Bailey) and ordered pizza for dinner.


South Beach!

Thursday we slept in and Anna took us on a tour of Miami's campus while John was at work. This is one of the only days we were able to check in on Bailey while she was playing at Camp Bow Wow. We went out for dinner at Scotty's Landing. It was really good and reasonably priced. We got to sit right by the water, which was really nice. A nice lady from Alabama took this picture for us. I love running into Southern people when we're not in Southern places! It just feels familiar, which is really nice when you're in an unfamiliar place.

Dinner at Scotty's Landing.

Friday, John got off work early. We went back to South Beach. Since Memorial Day weekend was coming up, we knew it would be ridiculously crowded for the rest of our trip, so this was our last chance to go. Again, it was beautiful. We found an area that wasn't crowded at all. We read a little and relaxed in the water for a while. Last year, the water was still a little too cold for my taste. This time, it was perfect! We went back home, showered, grilled out and played cornhole. Just like old times. It was a low key but very fun night. 

Saturday, we lounged for the majority of the day. Anna and I read while the guys played X-Box. We decided we should do something besides be lazy, so we ended up going bowling. I'm horrible at bowling (except the Wii kind. Haha.), but it was still fun. After bowling, we went to a Cuban restaurant. It was SO good. Anna found a Groupon for the place, so we all ended up eating our fill (and some) for super cheap. I even tried some Cuban coffee. I HATE coffee, but it came in such cute little cups. I tried Josh's and decided I would like one too. They were also super cheap! We even had enough for everyone to have another meal to take home! NC State was playing those other people in baseball when we got back home. I don't care about baseball, but I actually got into that game and I was really disappointed when we lost. I stayed up to play games for a little bit, then ended up crashing early (but still really late for me). 

Sunday we slept in a bit then drove to the Everglades. This was my favorite part of the trip. We had planned on kayaking (which I would still like to do some day!), but the timing didn't work out for us, so we just hiked. We still had an amazing time! The "hike" was only like .8 miles round trip, so I wouldn't really consider it a hike. We pretty much walked down a ramp. We still saw a lot on such a short walk though! First we just saw some birds, a weird bug, then some turtles.

That was cool and all, but I was looking for gators and panthers! I knew the chances of seeing a panther were pretty much 0, but I was hoping to get lucky.

Anna and I spotted the first alligator in the water. He was kind of far away and we could only see his eyes, but we still got excited and took pictures.

We kept walking and we saw one coming up out of the water! SO COOL!

Then, there was this cool lizzard, his neck flares in and out, this picture has it flared out.

Close up!

Sunday, we went out to a place Anna and John really like, Titanic. The food was really good and so are their micro brews. Apparently, we went on kareoke night. John joked that he would do it if they had "Forgot about Dre". Of course Josh said he would too. I don't think either of them expected that they would actually have it. Guess what...

We had a blast watching them and the crowd really enjoyed it. They were much better than the people that had gone before and after them. I would never have the courage to get up in front of a crowd of people and sing, much less rap, so I was super impressed with both of them!

Monday we went were lazy for the first part of the day then we went to the beach. John put ribs in the oven to cook so they would be super tender when we were ready to eat that night. It was Memorial Day, so it was ridiculously crowded. It was also not nearly as pretty as South Beach. We still had a good time though. We didn't get in the water, it wasn't very nice looking. I did put my feet in just before we left. Haha. We mostly relaxed, or attempted to. It was quite windy and sand was getting EVERYWHERE! My entire body was covered. I was just laying on the blanket and it looked like I had rolled all in the sand. We played bocce for a while after relaxing, then we went back home. The ribs smelled amazing! We had some delicious mac n cheese and asparagus with them. YUM! We played cornhole for a little while and planned our trip to Atlanta in August! I'm SO excited for the season opener! John had to be at work early the next morning, so we said our goodbyes to him then went to bed.

Tuesday was the day we were leaving. Anna had to go to work, so Josh and I packed and had breakfast. Anna took us to the airport and we got through security in no time. We were all set to go. We were scheduled to land at BWI at 4:30. We had to pick up Bailey by 6:30, so we had a nice little cushion. Our plane was delayed by about 20 minutes, so Josh decided to go to the bathroom. A minute after he got back, a girl we went to high school with came up to us. We haven't seen her since 2004! She lives in NC and we live in MD, but we run into each other in the Miami airport. Small world! I was a little antsy about our delay, but I still felt OK. We were going to have to take a shuttle to our car, but I figured we should still make it to pick Bailey up by 5:30ish since we didn't check any luggage. We finally boarded the plane and I felt much better. We sat there...and sat there...and sat there a little longer. The pilot said there was going to be another slight delay, but we were going to go ahead and watch the safety video and go into the holding area. Apparently there was a lot of air traffic in the BWI area. We waited for what seemed like forever. It was SO hot on the plane. Finally, they said there was going to be another delay, we went back to the terminal and let us off the plane without us knowing what time we would be leaving. I knew it was impossible for us to make it back in time to pick Bailey up since it was already after 4:00. I may or may not have cried at this point. The funny thing is, our flight was still listed as on time on all the boards. Haha. We realized we were just going to have to eat at the airport. We were both pretty hungry. We ended up grabbing salads from Chili's to go. We didn't want to go too far, because we didn't know how long it would be before we boarded again. We both called in to work as a just in case for the next day. We really had no clue what time we were leaving. We decided if we got home after midnight, we weren't going to work the next day. Josh started making fishing plans in his head for the afternoon. Haha. I called Camp Bow Wow and arranged for Bailey to stay another night :-/. We decided we were going to enjoy the rest of our vacation, so we each had a beer at the airport bar. We were able to board about 30 minutes later. After it was all said and done, we ended up being about 4 hours behind schedule. I've only ever had 2 major delays while flying, and they were both leaving Miami! Haha.

The weather was starting to get bad when we landed. I'm glad we left when we did. Otherwise, I don't know if we would have made it home that night. We obviously didn't feel like cooking, so we picked up Chinese. Before we got home it was raining so hard we could barely see. The storms ended up getting pretty bad, and we just beat them home. It was SO nice to walk into our house, but it was too quite without Bailey there. It also smelled like new paint. Haha. It felt so good to sleep in our own bed. We both had a hard time falling asleep. We both napped on the plane while we were waiting to take off, so I'm sure that didn't help things. It was really hard to get up the next morning. We were both exhausted. It did make it easier that we didn't have to feed and walk Bailey, but I was still sad I didn't get my normal goodbye hugs and kisses. Wednesday was a tough day at work, but I left a little early so we could pick up Bailey. Josh called me at work to ask me to pick him up first. He wanted to be there when we got her. It's out of the way, but I was more than happy to do that. I'm glad we were able to pick her up together. She looked so small when we picked her up! We had been around Carter all week and he's a bit bigger than Bailey. She also lost a few pounds while she was there from running around all day for a week straight. She was very excited to see us, but not like I thought she would be. She was pretty much how she usually is when we pick her up from camp, but more tired and more cuddly when we got home :-). This was the longest we had ever been away from her, so it was really tough. Josh even let her sleep in bed with us that night, which has never been allowed before.

We had a really good time on our vacation. It was nice to get a break from every day life. It was so great to catch up with old friends. It's even better, because we'll see them again so soon!