The last week and a half....

 

Well, the last week and a half has been full of interesting tidbits for us here in Ft. Lauderdale. 

The good news is that both Bill and I have finally received our Florida drivers licenses, which means we are officially Floridians. Yeah! 

We had a lovely Easter in St. Petersburg with Bill's mom. Mary Alice cooked a delicious Easter roast, potatoes, and green beans and we feasted. There were a few games of Skip-bo as well as a movie for Mary Alice and me (while Bill watched the Masters) and lunches in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg. 

Saturday night Bill and I celebrated our anniversary at Berns Steakhouse in Tampa. It was one of the most fun experiences we have had at a restaurant. We had a delicious dinner and then had a tour of the kitchen and wine cellar. Afterwards we went to a separate area and had dessert and coffee. We had reservations at 7:30 and didn't get home until 11:00! It was quite the experience. 

Bill and I drove back to Ft. Lauderdale on Monday afternoon in a rental car. We left our car in St. Petersburg (thank you Mary Alice!) so it will be there in June and we don't have to worry about it while we cruise the Keys for the next few weeks. 

 

On Friday on the way to St. Petersburg Bill and I stopped in Sarasota for a few hours to check out a marina. As we wrote before, we looked at 9 marinas in the St. Pete area but didn't find anything that we really loved. Since we are going to be on the West Coast of Florida for at least the whole summer, we really wanted to find somewhere that was close to everything and had the facilities that we have grown used to (pump out, laundry, secure marina, etc.) Well, we found that and more at Marina Jacks in downtown Sarasota. We are excited about our new "home" and look forward to arriving sometime in June. Sarasota is about 45-50 minutes from St. Pete so we will be making plenty of visits to see and stay with Mary Alice. 

 

Last week we were woken up by someone banging on the boat telling us our car had been vandalized. We went up to the parking lot to find the passenger side window of our car smashed. The police had already been and filed a report. Apparently someone smashed the windows of five cars in the parking lot in the early hours of the morning. The vandals took only what was in the glove compartment -- the registration, proof of insurance, car manual, and our AAA membership. We are very lucky in the sense that they did not take Bill's golf clubs, which were in the back seat!!! We called the glass company and they fixed the window that afternoon. 

 

Bill played golf last week with a few buddies and shot an 87, which he was very excited about. I went to the beach for a few hours. We also saw Amy and Juan for dinner last week, which is always fun. And of course we now have the Red Sox to keep us busy at night. We signed up for the MLB package again so we can watch all the games on the computer. We are still loving the Mac. 

So today we provisioned and are ready to leave for Miami tomorrow morning. We will spend a few days in Miami and then head to Key Largo, Marathon, Key West (and points in between) before heading up to the West Coast of Florida. 

We know we haven't been good about keeping up the blog (sorry!) and promise to be better about posting pictures and keeping everyone up to date with our travels. 

Hope everyone had a great Easter!