February in Florida...

In February Andy & I went on a vacation to Florida...and Georgia...and the Bahamas...and he even got a trip to Tennessee in there before I joined up with him...

Andy ended up taking the whole month of February off, but I could only get 2 weeks off from my job.  He left here on January 29 and drove to our daughter & son-in-law's place in Tennessee where he stayed for a few days before driving on to our son & daughter-in-law's place in Georgia.   After a few days there...and helping them install a new dishwasher (YAY!!), he drove to Florida where I have 2 sisters with winter homes.  I then joined him on February 10th to start our joint vacation!

I had to drive through snow to get to the airport to leave, so when I arrived in Florida and it was mid-60 degree weather, I thought I was in heaven!  My sister, though, thought it was a bit chilly...thus the neck scarf in this photo!   Here we were waiting to be seated for our lunch at Sage Biscuit in Bradenton.  I definitely recommend the crab omelette!!!  :D

The temperatures quickly warmed up while we were in Florida, so most of the time we were tootliing around in this...

...my sister's VW EOS convertible!!!  

It is a hard-top convertible, so she simply pushes a button and the trunk opens...

...the rear window and hard-top automatically get stowed in the trunk...and then the trunk lowers to close itself!  Pretty neat to watch!  (Of course, I'm easily entertained, too!  LOL)

On day we were headed out to lunch at a restaurant in Cortez...it is one we've eaten at several times before.  However, when we got to it, there was no parking and the line was around the building, so we got back in our car (actually Bev's crew-cab truck...there were 5 of us adults) and headed back towards Bradenton since the line of traffic headed to Anna Marie Island was HORRIBLY long and slow-moving.  As we got back on Cortez Blvd., we saw a restaurant directly to our right and decided to pull in and try it.  We were a little concerned because there were only 1-2 cars in the parking lot, but we were hungry and decided to give it a go.  (While we were there the customers started pouring in.  Evidently, we had arrived just minutes before the lunchtime rush started!) The name was "O'Shucks" and turned out to be FANTASTIC food with a great waitress.  We sat outside and enjoyed the 75-80 degree weather! 

When I went inside to use the restroom, I passed this guy...well...actually a dummy... that was modeling an apron that they sell as a souvenir...

Like I said earlier, I have two sisters with retirement homes in FL...so while in Florida I was able to gift a quilt to my sister and brother-in-law, Bev and Denny.  They are the ones that live in Illinois and hosted us when we went out there last May for their grandson's graduation.

The quilt is called "Cottage Blossoms" and was my choice for Bev because she loves to grow flowers and she likes quilts with a mostly-white background...

(Denny is hiding behind the quilt on the left)

Here the quilt is on their guest bed...(the bed I intended it for!)...

And though they are "free-handed"...( used a stencil to draw them)...it was my first time doing feathers!!!  

The quilt was free-motion quilted on my Juki TL2000Qi ...and let me just say that this is NOT supposed to happen...I accidentally sewed my quilting glove to the quilt!!!  Thank goodness the needle only got my glove and not my thumb, too!!!

More vacation photos to come in the next post!!!  

Loretta