Better Late Than Never

Ok, so we went to Tampa for vacation on July 19th and returned the 25th. It's only been a month since then so I guess it is about time to report on the adventure. We went to escape the sadness that seemed to fill our daily lives just after my mom died. We had originally scheduled a trip to St. Louis, MO but when my mom got sick I canceled those plans.

So my friends at work gifted us with some extra spending money and we took off to Tampa for a week. We saw a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game, where Matt caught a home run ball bare-handed and became a new fan favorite. We went to Adventure Island water park where Andrew had tons of fun sliding down twisty curvy rides. We went to Busch Gardens (pictured) and Andrew was nuts for all the roller coasters. At four o'clock that day we got caught in a downpour that we thought would last a few minutes, like most afternoon storms in Florida, but at six we decided we'd had enough and headed back to the hotel. Andrew didn't like missing some coaster time, so I took him back the next day and he rode Montu - three times!

We ate at Landry's on my birthday (yes I am now 41) and drove around Clearwater Beaches and St. Petersburg. If you ask the boys what they remember most about our vacation, I bet they'd say bowling since we went a record 3 times in 3 days!

Anyway, it was a long drive and we were exhausted once we returned home but it did us a world of good. Both Matt and I commented that we weren't sad anymore and we pronounced ourselves ready to return to normalcy. I'll let you know if we ever find normal - we didn't have that even before my mom was sick. Nonetheless, we are all doing well now. In fact I think we laughed so hard with each other during this trip that we came dangerously close to busting a gut.