Instead of staying home for the holidays this year, an executive decision was made to go to Tampa to visit my Gramma for Christmas. Since I’m on the east coast and my family in the midwest, we flew separately to Florida. Due to (what I assume were) mechanical problems, my flight kept getting delayed until we finally boarded the plane 5 hours later. No worries, friends! While I was sitting at the bar awaiting the updates on my flight, I made some pals! That’s how 4 random strangers shared a few hours of friendship. Naturally, we took a selfie.

This was the best we could do with our given lack of sobriety and tiredness and airport lighting. Why didn’t I correct for any of this before posting it? I want you to feel the way we felt before boarding.

Naturally I did make it to Tampa (very late at night) and after some decent sleep, was ready to rock on day one! We grabbed a mimosa and the brothers and I sat on the beach and walked in the waves collecting seashells.

It was a day for relaxing. We did some running and exercising but mostly just adapted to the southern heat and humidity. We spent a lot of time the next day with family, cooking and preparing gifts. It was Christmas and I didn’t have time to take pictures to share!

Day 3 we got up early and packed some lunches and headed south to get on a boat and go fishing. I slept on the drive down because I am absolutely not a morning person.

We ran into a couple dolphins as we were searching for fish. They played around us for a bit. It was exciting to me!

We finally started dropping pools in various spots. I waited to take pictures of all the fish until the end of the trip. But we did accidentally catch some other critters!

We ended up catching 5 fish total that were within the size range acceptable to keep. I caught 2 of them! Which was surprising to all of us, since I haven’t been fishing in many years.

I was so proud of my little fish! Well only one was that little. They were both sheeps head fish and they were both delicious! We cooked up the fish for dinner and boy oh boy was it scrumptious!