Its true, and frankly, if you call yourself a Mother..... YOU ARE TOO! Even further, you are YOU and THAT IS AMAZING!
I won't lie, I am in a new and beautiful place in my life. One that is fully aware of what I bring to the table of the world. One that is, for the first time in years, completely open to all the amazing that God made me to be. I am over the comparison game, the insecure struggle bus, and the don't be too bright mentality. My light is bright y'all, and I don't mind saying it!
Its no secret that our family travels. For this Mother's Day, Bob took me out to Florida for 3 glorious days of togetherness before his meetings. Lets all say an enormous thank you to Southwest for the companion pass, and Bob's amazing company for the encouragement! Florida is gorgeous, and Clearwater Beach is especially lovely.
We arrived at the exquisite Opal Sands Resort last Saturday. I felt like a queen. The absolutely perfect splurge. My hubby knows me so well. Our room was amazing and there is no other feeling than entering a clean, organized room knowing you aren't responsible for ANY OF IT. AHHHH!!!!!
Being an East Coast visitor on West Coast time is the BEST. We seem really young and fun. First night we stayed up till 3AM, and then slept in till 10! We watched TV, had a late dinner, and just did whatever the heck we wanted!
The next morning we found ourselves on the beach. Just a stones throw from our room we grabbed some coffee and sat to read. We swam, got a wee sunburn, and collected millions of sand particles!
I am going to hop in here right now and give you some context for this photo. 30 minutes before Bob took this I was in tears because my foot was miserably painful navigating sand and surf. My foot HURTS in the morning, I am currently taking steroids to try yet another way of navigating the nerve pain, but the mornings suck. My foot limits me, it limits my activity, it limits everything about my life, and it works tirelessly to steal my joy. A few minutes before this photo I wanted to crawl into a hole of self pity and live there while on vacation.... on the beach..... with my husband. This sucks.
Bob had to help me out of my hole and remind me how incredible I am. So, this is me reminding myself that I am AMAZING. Even though I can't run, even though my foot limits everything, even though I have to wonder if I can make it 1 mile down the beach or not, I still bring awesome to the table. So this is me claiming it, believing it, and shouting it.....even after a few tears made it down my face.
After the beach we went to the movies and saw Avengers:Engame. After all the years of Marvel Movies it all came to an end. We drank and ate popcorn and took our time. It was wonderful, and we had the rest of the evening to do whatever we wanted!
So we watched the sunset and enjoyed the patio for 2.5 hours. Glory. Once we hit 9 we were in our room, jammies on ready for Game of Thrones. YES, we watched TV and sat around ALL DAY LONG.
Our last full day was probably my favorite. After sleeping in we headed over to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium to meet the infamous Winter and Hope. All of our family was introduced to these dolphins through the Dolphin Tale movies, and we just love them!
The CWA is developing a massive new complex to be able to care for more dolphins. The picture doesn't do it justice, its going to be massive, but while its being built we got to toodle around the old complex from the movie.
Winter is truly an amazing dolphin. Bob and I look forward to the day when we can bring the girls to meet her. Such an incredible story. Like Bob says, Clearwater definitely has a dolphin based economy. She is everywhere!
For those of you familiar with her, I was amazed that she doesn't use her prosthetic tail more than a few hours during the week. It isn't critical for her survival. She is so smart that she has actually figured out how to swim like a shark (side to side) instead of the normal up and down. The prosthetic tail actually bugs her and she spends the majority of her time without it. Winter loves to swim to the bottom of her pool that she shares with Hope and PJ to this little half wall where she hooks her tail and stretches her back. She is a cool little creature to watch.
We stayed at the aquarium for a good long while because a torrential ocean storm rolled in and we were stuck. We had a blast though and even got ourselves introduced to one of the directors of the aquarium. Bill Potts spent 20 minutes or so chatting with us and we were so grateful. That never would have happened with our girls hankering to do anything but stand still. What a great experience and after contributing to the economy at the gift shop we headed back home in the rain.
The downpour stopped at about 6 and we had the entire evening to ourselves. We got some bike cruisers and headed over the nearest bridge to the beach known as the Sand Key. It was an incredible experience. The rain had kept everyone off the beach and the deluge of rain had actually packed down the sand. Albeit a little tough, we took our cruisers right out on the wide open beach and had a near apocalyptic experience. Not a soul in sight.
Bob and I have so much fun together, and this experience truly ranks up there. Such a neat thing to do including laughing about going over the bridge on a one speed, super squeaky, ill-fitted beach cruiser. Such fun.
My foot was feeling amazing that evening, so we decided to take the 2 hour stroll to dinner. We bar hopped, had some amazing tequila, walked onto the pier, saw the sunset, and casually made our way to the Beach Comber restaurant.
The whole evening was perfect and finished our little getaway beautifully. (BTW, that resort right over my shoulder in the foreground, that was ours).
Happy Mother's Day to me.
