Florida Trip! Day 8 - St. Augustine and a Choir hook-up

This morning (I think. It's all blurring...) Jeff got up mighty early with the girls til we were all ready to get up and at 'em. We had to pack everything up for our return to Orlando (see, we had to turn in our rental car, then be at the airport by 5:15ish a.m. the next day... We didn't really want to do that from Jacksonville, 2 hours away.) We headed out (Omar had to work again) to St. Augustine to see America's oldest city, and to tour a chocolate factory. We got there a bit early for our tour, so we went on the carousel and played for a minute at a park, which the girls loved. Alisa didn't even cry on the carousel! (even though I know they don't really look happy... remember, they are just getting over being sick.)

I love how Kate poses for all her pictures!


We found our way back around town and made it in time for the chocolate tour. Kate so graciously treated us, since she had bought a groupon. The girls were pretty good til the end, when it got near Lisie's nap time - yikes! It was fun and interesting, and they gave us lots of samples - that's the important part, of course! Plus, a discount on things we bought then. Delicioso!! You can't beat real chocolate!
The very first thing Jeff said when we got in the car afterward: "Differences?" (In case you didn't know, I used to work in a chocolate shop/factory, so this question was quite appropriate and immediately understood.) The biggest difference, was that Whetstone (the choc co. we toured) actually MAKES their chocolate, like straight from the bean. They also have a lot more machines, apparently the original Whetstone invented a lot of them. At Farris and Foster's (my beloved alma mater of chocolate) we bought the actual big blocks of chocolate, but we did a lot more hand crafting, which I like.

A familiar sight:
A favorite sight:
Lookin' good!

We went to Steak n Shake for lunch (yum!) and had planned on touring the city a bit after that, but A) Alisa was ready for sleeping, and B) we saw a lot of it trying to navigate our way around before, (aka, we got lost, haha!) So, we decided to say goodbye to my great buddy Kate right there and head back to O-town. There was definitely some napping on the way back... lots and lots of it!
We got back into town early in the afternoon and JUST in time for me to be able to run in and do a session at the Orlando Temple. Bless Jeff, he stayed with the cranky kids and just watched them in the car/in the grass while I got to FINALLY go inside one of my favorite temples. (Can't wait for the day when our kids are old enough that we can go together on trips!)
After a diaper-search, we made our way to Bubbalou's Bodacious Barbeque, where I was meeting up with my old choir friends (mostly from other years.) It was relatively a small crowd, but I really had a blast with JP, Holly, Justin, Stephanie and her son, Will. After not too long, my girls were being VERY unhappy, so Jeff (so graciously, again) just took them home and let me catch up with my friends. Since it was a Tues night, Bubbalou's closed up pretty early, so we relocated to the Cheesecake Factory for some dessert, and ended up staying for awhile. We were originally going to stay at my friend, Sarah's place that night, but turns out she's pretty far from the airport anyway, plus she would be at work on the graveyard shift the whole time we would have been there. So, our condo opened up again, last minute, so we were able to book only 10 or 20 miles from the airport, which was nice. I ended up getting back somewhere abouts midnight or so, then had to do the major pack-up for our early morning flight. Yuck! I let Jeff go to bed, though, and stayed up to clean the rental car and condense all our goods down by one bag, so I wouldn't have to get up any earlier than required. Got to sleep about 1:30. :(