Randy. Sabra, & Zoey Come to Florida!

What a whirlwind week it's been! Time truly flies when you're having fun and it's always tons of fun having your best friends in town! 

Randy and Sabra flew in super early on the 21st and stayed until the 28th. Thursday, we headed out to Honeymoon Island State Park and took the ferry over to Caladesi Island. They have a little restaurant over there and we ate lunch on the beach and the girls had a blast playing in the sand and water. Luckily I had made and frozen enchiladas so dinner was easy that night and we could relax a little more. 

Friday, we hung around locally and went to the beach. Brian had to work but since he works right in Rocky Point, we met him right after at Bahama Breeze, had a great dinner, and headed to the Lightning game. We got Tatum and Zoey "My First Bolts Game" pins and they were so adorable! Tatum is enjoying sports, one game at a time! So far she's been to a few baseball games, a hockey game, and tomorrow we're going to a college football game! But anyway...

Saturday, we spent the entire day at Busch Gardens and had an awesome time. We took turns keeping the babies and we all got to ride the big rides. Sheikra and Mantu will always be my faves! 

Sunday afternoon/evening we spent at Clearwater Beach, an obligatory tourist destination for all visitors. Monday, we headed to Orlando to hit up Universal's new water park, Volcano Bay! So much fun and definitely worth the price, considering it's way cheaper than the other parks! The best part about the day was definitely avoiding the 4 hour wait to do the 125 foot vertical trap door water slide. Sabra and I had just come off another ride when we were talking about the wait times for the other two slides that come out of the volcano. A kid walking by that worked there overheard us and told us that the other two smaller slides were closed and the third slide had a wait time of over 4 hours, but that he could get us on without any wait at all! We went running all over trying to find Brian and Randy and finally caught up to them at the last minute so that we could all go, two at a time but without waiting! It was amazing!

Tuesday, we had another beach day and then Brian and I watched Zoey so Randy and Sabra could have a date night on a sunset dinner cruise. Zoey is such an easy baby so it was a piece of cake! We were so lucky to have our friends come see us and we had such a blast!

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Surviving Hurricane Irma, Part 2

Two weeks post-Irma and I'm just getting around to writing this... We spent just over a week up visiting family. We left on Tuesday the 5th and got back to Florida on Wednesday the 13th. We got back to our apartment first and miraculously we had power already! But because it was empty of furniture, we went back to my aunt and uncle's house who did not have power. Luckily, we were only out of power there for less than 24 hours and it rained that night so we opened all the windows and had a nice breeze all night that made it bearable. 

There were a few blessings about the hurricane that I've tried to keep in mind whenever I bitterly think about the stress it caused. The first is that none of my family had severe damage to their homes from the hurricane. The second is that Brian got paid for all but two days that we were gone. The third is that I got to see my family and some friends which was wonderful. 

Driving back was really strange. The worst damage we saw was around the Jacksonville area. Almost every billboard was ripped or damaged. There were the big overhead highway signs that had been knocked down and lots of trees down and debris everywhere. There were lines of 45-50 cars at gas stations that had gas and police officers directing traffic and making sure there weren't any fights. Empty gas stations with bags over the gas handles everywhere. Stores completely out of water and bread. Grocery shopping with no frozen/cold foods because stores lost power and everything went bad. Cleaning out refrigerators that hadn't had power in over a week. Our church has been sending people to the Naples area every weekend to do disaster relief and it's heartbreaking to know the numbers of people who lost everything farther south. 

Somehow we didn't hit any traffic on the way out or in, except in a few spots where they were doing roadwork. We didn't get stuck on the side of the road with no gas (but we were prepared with a 5 gallon gas can in the trunk just in case), and Brian even worked with my stepdad a few days and made some extra cash on the side. We were by all accounts extremely blessed and somehow, I can look back on the stress and anticipation of the week now that we're past it and realize how lucky we were. I'm so glad we decided to evacuate since most people that stayed were without power for over a week. It was an extra blessing because I definitely wouldn't have wanted to put Tatum through that. Plus, we enjoyed some wonderful autumn weather, Tatum got to spend some time with two sets of grandparents, and I got some mental health time surrounded by green mountains which definitely did my soul good. 

Thank you to everyone that reached out and was concerned about us! We are lucky to be doing so good and we successfully made it through our first natural disaster (and hopefully our last in Florida).

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Surviving Hurricane Irma, Part 1

Let me start this post by saying it has NOT been easy for us since moving to Florida. In case anyone has been under the impression that our lives have been peachy keen since we packed up our entire lives and drove 2500 miles, I'll set you straight right now.

Before we moved, Brian began applying to jobs back in April. He had so many responses that we didn't anticipate he would have any difficulty finding a job once we got here, and since everyone needed him NOW, he decided to stop applying until we were 2 weeks away from moving. It took him from halfway into May until the day after Labor Day to land a normal, permanent, full-time job. Insane right!?! We thought so. Especially since we arrived in Florida with as much stuff as we could pack in two cars on June 1. He worked temporary jobs for awhile, always going to other interviews until finally, he had two amazing opportunities on the table and was able to negotiate a higher salary with the one he wanted. Flash forward to the day he started that job (September 5) and when he got home from work we decided we should leave that night to get away from Hurricane Irma. Awesome timing, Mother Nature.

Let me take a moment to stress a few other major blood pressure raisers in our lives. Finding an apartment in Florida SUCKS. The nice places are either wayyyy too expensive or they're government subsidized, which means our family of three has to make under $35k a year to live there. You can find a decent apartment in the ghetto for $1k if you want, as long as it's not a 55+ community. Oh, and buying a house here is a terrible idea because property taxes cost you both arms, legs, and your neck. It's a miracle anyone lives here at all. When we finally found an apartment in our price range, desirable location, and available, it was halfway through August. I mentioned in my last post we still haven't had our stuff delivered. That's still true. So basically it's been a month without our things. Which means my baby that was 3 months old when we left is now almost 7 months and she's outgrown all the clothes that fit in our cars and I'm constantly spending money to buy her clothes that fit, even though she has tons packed away. Are you getting stressed reading this yet?

After we wasted our entire Labor Day holiday staying within a 20 minute radius of our empty apartment and our stuff wasn't delivered, YET AGAIN, I looked at Brian and started crying. We both looked at each other and said, "Why did we move here? This was a mistake." The next day, we left because of Irma. We decided early on we would rather look stupid and leave even if we didn't need to than risk being without power and being in that disaster. I've never prayed for other people so fervently in my life. Speaking of prayer, I think it's the only reason I haven't had a total breakdown since this whole process of Florida began.

There are some things you learn as you get older... one of the biggest being that sometimes you need faraway friends that you can text/talk to all day every day that just get you (shoutout to a Sabra who I Marco Polo literally every day). Sometimes the people around you who are supposed to be good friends just aren't. And that's ok, everyone has different priorities and when yours don't align, it's okay to let them go. When times are tough, it's better to have real friends.

I've held back writing this post for awhile because I felt like maybe I was weak for all the ways this life changing experience went completely wrong and the way I've handled it. Then I realized I didn't want to be one of those people who only posted the good on social media and gave everyone a false representation of our "perfect" life.

I keep waiting for that one moment to come where I'll think coming out here was worth it, but so far it's nowhere in sight. Being close to my grandma has been wonderful though, and I can't thank my incredible aunt and uncle enough for letting us be total bums at their house for so long. Brian and I have determined that Florida is definitely not where we want to be post graduate school, so I guess that's one good thing.

For the time being, we're near my parents house in Maryland & West Virginia. We spent a few days with my mom and stepdad in West Virginia when we first arrived and are now in Maryland with my dad and stepmom for a few days. On the not so bright side, the hurricane has kept moving northwest (contrary to what all those know-it-alls told us) and it turns out we were super smart to leave when we did because the Tampa area could get positively slammed by this hurricane. So we're going to be here for a few more days and I can actually visit with more friends! Hit me up if you want to get together. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying my time in an alternate reality before we have to head back to the disaster zone (literally). Prayers for everyone affected are much appreciated. 

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