The Hofreiters

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West Coast Beach Weekend

Welcome to Florida!

This summer I decided to take a few Mondays off from work in a series I like to call,  Mental Health Mondays. I already have Friday afternoons off, so I figured I'd turn some 2.5 day weekends into 3.5 day weekends! I got Christopher to participate on one of the Mondays and we spent the night in Lido Beach on a Sunday night.


Sunday we got to the beach, checked in, and immediately headed out to the beach. We stayed at a resort that provides beach chairs so that was nice not having to haul our own down to the beach. 


We read, people watched, played in the water, ate chips and salsa, and watched a beautiful sunset.


Once the sun was down, we headed into St. Armands Circle for dinner and daiquiris at Daiquiri Deck. Christopher got a burger, I got a wrap, and we both got drinky.


We sat outside on the porch so we could people watch some more, and the icy cold daiquiris were definitely needed. Plus they have SO many flavors to choose from that we will have to make sure to go back next time and put a bigger dent in that list.

Monday we wanted to visit the Tervis Tumbler factory store before hitting the beach. What a glorious place!!! They had SO many cups, styles I had never seen in real life, new patterns, kiddie cups, you name it they had it. It was awesome. We were also able to trade in 4 of our Tervis Tumblers that had bubbled weird in the dishwasher. Now in 4-6 weeks we will have 4 brand new replacements! Tervis has a lifetime guarantee, so they will replace injured cups.  



After cup shopping, we got Sweet Frog for lunch, because we are adults at the beach and we can. It was the perfect summer lunch. 


We decided to visit Siesta Key Beach Monday because it's so pretty. We got there kind of late in the morning so it was already packed, but we set up our tent, turned on some music and broke out the cooler. 


After only 3 short hours this happened. The sky got BLACK and it was SO windy that the sand was stinging our legs. Then to make it worse, it HAILED! 


Christopher and I took our tent down in the sand and hail storm wearing only bathing suits, it was kind of painful. Not to mention our beach chairs and shoes were being blown away while we worked. It was kind of a mess. Once we finally got everything packed up, we took our junk and sat in our beach chairs under a pavilion. It was lightning by the time we got there so we decided not to try and rinse off and pack up the car in a lightning storm. We each cracked open a fresh drink and we huddled together under out only dry towel left. Once the storm passed we rinsed ourselves and all of our beach stuff off and decided to head home. 


Just to give you an idea of how crazy fast this came on, above is looking to the right at the top and then looking left at the bottom. It was insane. 


As a special treat we stopped at POP Craft in Sarasota on our way to the interstate to get handcrafted popsicles. They were so freaking delicious that I decided to try making some myself, check back for that soon.

We are so in love with Sarasota and the surrounding beaches. It really is too bad they are twice as far as the East coast. Until next time West coast...