Ali's Trip to Florida

I'll be honest...I've never been a huge fan of Florida, but my good friend, Darcie, and her husband, Josh, live in Jacksonville. Josh is going to law school down there and will be done this summer - then they are promptly moving to Denver. In any event, when an opportunity to go to a training class for work at Disney World in Orlando came up, I took it so I could visit Darcie (not so I could get my picture taken with Mickey Mouse).

I was in Disney World for five full days (February 22 - 27), and I'm going to come off sounding like Scrooge saying this, but Disney World is not my cup of tea. There are many reasons, but let it suffice to say that I just don't understand why one would go to Disney World for vacation when there are so many wonderful real cities and vacation destinations out there to discover...places with culture, real people, and restaurants that do not serve butter in the shape of Mickey's head. Yes, it's fun to take children there for a day or two, but as expensive as Disney World is, you could take a family of four to Europe for a week for the same price as it costs to spend a week in Disney World, a completely fabricated place.

I escaped the confines of the "happiest place on earth" on that fifth day and drove north to Jacksonville to spend the weekend with Darcie, Josh, and our friend, Aly, that flew down from Chicago for the weekend. Aly and I were loving the warm weather (being the Midwestern dwellers that we are), and I think my favorite part of the whole weekend was Saturday morning: Aly, Darcie, and I put on sun dresses, got coffee, and walked barefoot along the beach. Pure bliss after a long, cold winter.

Here's a picture of Aly and I in St. Augustine - and, yes, I'm also posing in it for my 21 week belly picture:


I returned from Florida on March 1 and was happy to hear that I missed 4 inches of snow in Omaha while I was gone (maybe spending 5 days in Disney World had its merits after all). And now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that spring makes an early arrival this year and that Nebraska is done with snow until December - here's to hoping!