Thanksgiving 2009 at St. Pete Beach - the Brrrrr trip About This Page:

[ShellingConnie]

A little side track from the trip report:

I was crazy enough to volunteer myself to be a Lunch room moniter today for the 8th graders. Normally the teachers eat in the cafeteria with the kids but they were given a seperate luncheon and asked for parent volunteers to cover it.

Those 8th graders sure think they can get away with alot. One tried throwing food at his friend in front of me (Dude, you just got yourself time at the silent lunch table), several groups tried to sneak out without cleaning their tables and quickly found their way blocked by myself and 1 other volunteer. LOL

The teacher came in just as I was telling them to go clean the tables and she was annoyed so she told the whole class they were getting silent lunch on Monday. They all groaned. Hopefully they've learned their lesson.

I did discover that out of the other 4 volunteers, only 1 other besides me was stepping up to the plate to make sure things were done. The rest were too busy chatting with each other. Sigh.

I've got 2 more "opportunities" to volunteer to help with lunch duty. I don't know if I'll be able to stand the excitement.

[ShellingConnie]

And now it's time for the next update while I'm watching the snow fall steadily down. The roads were wet but not slippery when I was heading home. It's going to be an icy mess when the temps start dropping later.
The kids are sure going to be happy when they get home from school!

Here are the pics I mentioned in my previous update.

Rocky the ornament chewing cat. We adopted him at the end of June 2009 and he's 2 years old.



And the fellow trying his hand at Parasailing:

[ShellingConnie]

So now I'm up to the Saturday after Thanksgiving:

We woke up to another cold, sunny day. I should have been glad it was sunny but I was just so annoyed it was cold again! Just like the other days, DD10 and I woke up first.

While we were eating DS14 woke up. He ate and asked if we would wait for him to get dressed so he could come with us to the beach. After he was ready, we headed down the stairs, across the patio and to the hammocks where he laid down on one and said he’d catch up with us later.


DD and I looked for more shells but it was just more of the same small ones we’d seen before. It didn’t stop her from picking them up though.


We watched the pelicans diving for fish, watched a man fish (he didn’t catch anything – I asked him) and she worked on a sand castle before we headed back to the room. DS did get off the hammock and join us on the shell hunt. He was looking for broken shells to make a “Frankenshell”. LOL


DH was awake and on his laptop again when we got to the room. Housekeeping had already come and gone which was normal during the trip. They came early in the morning since our room was situated near the housekeeping area for the 2nd floor.


We cleaned up and hung around the room with me out on the balcony dealing with the shells and reading my Kindle.

At lunch time I wanted us to walk over to Crabby Bill’s for lunch. So we walked the block and a half over there. It was a cool place to eat.

We were seated at a huge picnic table by the window. Our view out the window:



Since it was after noon and I was on vacation, I had a Whiskey/Diet Pepsi (they didn’t serve Diet Coke), while everyone else had Diet Pepsi. We had Mozzarella Sticks for an appetizer which were just like every other place. The kids chose to eat the kids spaghetti with meatballs. DS14 loved it, DD10 didn’t like the meatballs so she gave them to DS.


DH got the grilled shrimp dinner which he said was good and I had the scrumptious grouper sandwhich, grilled. Ooooo it was so good. I’d never had anything like it before.


For dessert, DH had Florida key lime pie, DS, DD and I split the molten chocolate cake. I’m glad we split it at the recommendation of our server. That thing was huge. We had good service, good food and the décor was fun so I’m glad we ate there.


One of the decorations:


I heard the people at the table next to us complaining amongst themselves about the food. They just didn't like it at all. It just goes to show that different families like different types of food.

Afterwards, I tried to talk everyone into going to Ft. DeSoto State Park. It wasn’t far from us and I thought it would be nice to check out but everyone else wanted to go mini golfing again so we went back to Smugglers Cove Mini Golf. DD wasn’t as happy with her score this time so she got grumpy.


After mini golf we decided to go back to the resort and hit the beach since it had warmed up some.


On the way to the beach, we had to walk around the patio because it was being set up for a wedding reception. The tables and the linens were setup and they were just starting with the glassware and buffet dishes.


DH even came down with us. Yes, it was truly a miracle. He didn’t put on his swimsuit though. He sat in the beach chair while the rest of us froze our tushes off. You would have thought I'd have learned after my last try at swimming in the water.


The kids tried their hand at Boogie Boarding but the waves just weren’t big enough and it was getting dark. The temperature dropped fast and we didn’t stay there very long before heading up to the room.


At this point, I’m sick of spending so much time in the room. So I decided to do laundry after I cleaned up. Now that’s a big deal that I chose to do that. I hate doing laundry. I was just soooo tired of being in the room. When I’m at the beach, I want to be on the beach and it was just too cold to hang out there.

Part 2 coming up

[ShellingConnie]

Part 2 of the Saturday after Thanksgiving:

So I found the laundry room, Paid my 1.50 to wash the clothes, dumped in the detergent I brought with me (it would’ve cost 1.00 for detergent but I had my own) and went to the bar.

I had a Bloody Mary, chatted with the bartender who told me it was very slow since hardly anyone was leaving their rooms and went back to the laundry room 30 minutes later, put my stuff in the dryer, paid another 1.50 to dry and went out to the beach to take some pictures of the sunset. I zoomed this one so I could see the boat better.





So I’m walking around after getting my pictures and see a wedding on the beach. Then I checked out the pool area. No one was in the pool but kids were playing in the hot tubs as if they were swimming pools while their parents were bundled up nearby.

Then I walked to the other area of the resort to check out that pool area where they were setting up for a second wedding reception. The food was getting put out for that one and it looked pretty basic. Veg/dip, shrimp/dip, wings ect…

One of the members of the bridal party was there supervising. She had a lovely light blue long dress and flowers in her hair. I didn’t realize she was in the bridal party until another woman in the same dress joined her while I was walking around the pool.

I wandered to guest services and chatted with the clerk who told me they had 2 beach weddings that day and 2 wedding receptions. We must have missed the first beach wedding when we were mini golfing.

I stopped at the laundry room, grabbed my dry clothes and headed up to the room.

The food was set up for the wedding reception near our room and that sure looked good. I saw what looked like roast beef to be turned into sandwiches, coleslaw, grilled shrimp, meatballs and a lot of different finger foods. Yes, I’m shameless. I took my time walking by so I could see what was there.

Several of the bridesmaids and groomsmen were milling around and the bridesmaid dresses were gorgeous. They were a deep red and the cut was very flattering.

As I expected, the noise from the wedding reception could be heard in our room. The smoking area for it was right under our balcony so I didn’t want to go out there and smell the smoke. But I did go out there to gather the last of DD’s shells that were drying.

We spent the evening packing up, watching TV and trying to relax.

The reception went on until 11pm. The music was a mix of easy listening and rock n' roll so it wasn't too bad to be stuck listening to. It was cold out so I’m sure the guests froze.

Of course as soon as I’m in bed, the breakdown noise starts. All of the tables and chairs must’ve been stored in the housekeeping area by our room. For the next 2 hours, I laid in bed listening to them haul all of it to that room. Sigh.

Luckily it didn’t bother DH and the kids. I guess I'm just a light sleeper. Lucky me.
And the final installment will be tomorrow. Bye for now, I'm off to play in the snow.

[Colexis Mom]

Another great day! Sorry about the noise from the wedding!

[chezp]

What a shame about the noise from the wedding. Apart from that, it sounds like another great day.

[pamcarey]

How unfortunate that it still hasn't warmed up for you! And I would have been really annoyed to have the smoking area right under my balcony! But you seem to be making the best of it all!

[ShellingConnie]

We got just over 3" of snow Friday. I had all the kids in the neighborhood having a snowball fight on my front lawn. But that's what I get for hiding behind a tree and throwing snowballs when they passed our house. It was very fun. By 5pm on Saturday most of the snow was already gone since the temp. got warm.

And now it's time for the finale. The end of the Thanksgiving St. Petersburg Beach trip report.

We slept in a little on Sunday morning, grabbed some breakfast and loaded up the SUV to go home. It seemed like we had much more stuff to bring home too but the only big additions were the barely used boogie boards. The original plan was to spend some time swimming but again it was way too cold.

We did have to stop by guest services to get a copy of our bill and I made sure it was correct. They didn’t leave them outside of our room like I’m used to when we travel. The clerk said they stopped doing that because they had people complain about it.

I also mentioned the noise from the wedding reception and reception clean up and said that the room we had was not good for nights those are going on since you can hear everything. I recommended that they not give that room to anyone if they know they’ll have a reception going on during peoples stay. I don’t know if they’ll listen but at least I tried.

Overall, I liked the Sirata Beach Resort for a long weekend. The staff was pleasant, the room was decent even with the teeny shower/toilet area and the pools looked nice even if we didn’t get to use them.

St. Petersburg Beach itself is just ok. The shelling, which is a big deal to me, wasn't that great. All the shells were small and it was all the same type of shells over and over again. It may have just been the time of year though. The kids did love the wide beach and walking out to the sandbar easily.

I wish we had gone to Ft. Desoto State Park and had a chance to take DS14 on the paddle boats but it just didn’t happen. We also didn’t get down to the Clearwater Beach Marina for a dolphin tour but it was just too cold to go out in a boat.

The cold put a damper on the trip but we still did enjoy ourselves. I think I want to go further south in FL if I go again during Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe towards Ft. Myers/Sanibel Island area.

The in-laws mentioned they might be coming to see us next Thanksgiving so we won't be taking any trips then. And I'm not cooking either - I'll be ordering the dinner from one of the local grocery stores.

Hope it helps someone else when planning their beach trip.
Bye for now.......

[Colexis Mom]

Thanks for finishing your report! I'm glad you guys had a great long weekend!

[chezp]

Great finish - sounds like a lovely break away.

[pamcarey]

Great finish! Sorry about the cold weather, but it sounds like you made the best of it and still enjoyed yourselves. Thanks so much for sharing this TR!