Weekly Round Up: Vacay Everyday

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week was Mega Family Vacation week, and the TL&DR version is that it did not suck.

Before I start, I need to tell you that I have in-law issues.  Specifically my issue with my in-laws is that I don't see them enough.  My husband's parents are sadly no longer with us, so that leaves the families of the five siblings.  It's a major feat that we got someone from four out of the five families to Chicago two weeks ago and now we got almost everyone from a different set of four of the five families out to St. Augustine FL this past week.  There's a good reason why there was one missing family from each event - one person was shy on PTO so that's why they couldn't make Chicago trip, and there's a new grandbaby in SIL#2's family, so that's why they didn't make it to FL.

The setup was that each family got their own condo on the same beachfront property so that we were all close but not too close for the week.  We did a combination of the whole group of us (19 people), a few smaller group pairings, some individual family pairings, and a lot of mix and match meetups.

Vacay Activities

The number one activity of the week was being on the beach, and the number two activity was being in the pool.

The group took a day to ride the St. Augustine Tour Trolley.  The advantage is that it was an easy way to see the city and hop on and hop off anytime that we wanted to spend more time at any particular site.  The disadvantage is that there is a lot to see, so it ended up being a very long and hot day.

We also went to the lighthouse.

Food

We did a mix of going out and having each of the four families provide dinner one night.  There was a pasta night, there was a taco night, there was a sloppy joe night, and my family...ordered pizza for everyone;-)

I've got big ups to give to the following restaurants:

Hurricane Patty's (the firecracker shrimp appetizer is a must)

The Mellow Mushroom (where we got the pizza from)

Harry's Seafood (definitely on the upscale side but a memorable night)

Workouts

The condo had the tiniest gym that I've ever seen, so I did one brief weight workout there just to say that I'd been and kept the rest of it to quick bodyweight stuff in the condo.  Each morning I got up at sunrise and did either a sprinting workout or a very short run/walk on the beach, and then got into the ocean immediately afterwards (the correct way to finish every run).

Watching

There was a bit of Extended Family TV watching, which turned out to be the experience that I didn't know that I needed.

It turns out that we have quite a few Bachelorette fans in the tribe.  I don't like the show well enough to watch it on my own but with the whole clan it was a different experience.  Watching the boys' reactions to all of the Man Drama was priceless.

A few nights later someone put Legally Blonde on.  I of course loved it when it came out but haven't found a reason to rewatch since then.  Strangely enough the biggest fans were hubs and stepson #2, which I would have never predicted.  Based on this success my next project is to get them to watch Mean Girls.

On our final night the guys were in control of the remote and started watching Sharknado.  The viewing was interrupted when the nightly rainstorm finished up and a huge rainbow appeared, so we paused it and all ran out onto the beach.  It was a good decision, but yes I'd be down to pick up our viewing on a non-rainbow family vacation night.

Reading 

When we go on vacation with just the four of us, it's not unusual for me to read a book a day.  My go to is setting up a beach umbrella and chomping down books between swims.  I put a bit more effort into vetting my vacay reads to make sure that I've got really good surefire hits, because who needs to read anything less than stellar books for vacation.

Due to having the whole family there this was not a "book a day" vacation but I still did pretty good.

First of all, I never ever take up valuable luggage space with physical books...unless that book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which I'm reading for The Cool Bloggers Bookclub.  If you're asking why I didn't just check out a Libby copy, it's because there were none available, which to me can only mean that the Cool Bloggers Bookclub is far reaching.

My non-bookclub reading was:

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain. I've loved everything that I've read of hers so far, it was a given that she would make my vacation reading list.  This one is about Ernest Hemingway's first wife and that's all that I want to say about it.  I knew nothing about the subject going in and that's the right background.

Smile and Look Pretty by Amanda Pellegrino.  That's the same author as The Social Climber, which is the book that kicked off my reading spree a few months ago.  The stakes were high with this one - just because someone writes a book that knocks it out of the park doesn't mean that they brought their A game to every book.

The stakes were high but they paid off.  By a small margin I liked Social Climber better, but Smile carried its weight and was a close competitor.  It's about four assistants to the Rich and Famous who are working themselves to death for low pay in the hopes that their bosses will one day give them a Big Break in their respective industries.  To blow off steam, they start an anonymous blog detailing their work lives.  For obvious reasons, this was right up my alley.

Last but not least!  I Could Live Here Forever by Hanna Halperin, which I found through Grace's most recent monthly reading recap.  She said that she read it in less than 24 hours and I did one better.  Our return flight was delayed by five hours, and I snarfed the entire thing down in the airport during that time.

Grace said that the description of the book has spoilers and gave a short non-spoilery summary in her recap.  I went into it based only on her description and looking at the Amazon blurb now after the fact==>yeah just read Grace's summary and if it sounds like something that you'd be interested in, go for it with nothing else!  I'll say what she said in fewer words, it's about a writer who meets the perfect guy.  But something is a little off....

The other thing to tell you is that after I finished the book, I read the author's bio and my jaw dropped when I learned what her day job is.  She knows what she's writing about!

Sigh, now I'm home again and I have nothing to read....

What's Next

Back home!  I need to catch you up on some work crapola and then tell you what my future work plans are.  I think it's a two-part series - part one is the latest round of crap and part two is what I'm going to do about it.  Let's see if I can get it written out coherently and we'll take it from there.