Fathers Day

I was right! During our brief trip to Walmart last night to pick up the waffles, It seemed like the shop had suddenly become overrun with Brits. Up until now, we've hardly heard any other British accents wherever we've been (probably because we've not been to any theme parks yet).  Even though we were on the third of three planes arriving from Britain at the same time, nobody else has come over to this part of Florida.  Last night however, it was a completely different story. The shop was busier than I've ever seen it and the British accents seemed to outnumber the Americans. All of a sudden the environment had become crowded and loud!  It was the same this morning. My usual quiet 7am breakfast may now be a thing of the past. Although I couldn't see them as their villa has an 8 foot high wooden fence all round, I could certainly hear the loud, shrill screams of several children arguing with each other and jumping in the pool.  They obviously don't have the same 'pool rules' sign as us, or if they do, they've chosen to ignore it.

Bernard was woken up by their screams, so they must have been loud! I'm hoping that this is just the excitement of their first day, otherwise they will be meeting Bernard very soon!

We've been extremely fortunate up until now - except for our immediate neighbour who appears to live here permanently (judging by the contents of his garage) none of the other villas in our little cluster have been occupied.

Harrison watched Lewis come second in the Grand Prix and we were all ready for our daily dip in the pool by 11am.  Yesterday I had pegged a note to our front door handle to tell the Amazon delivery driver that in case we didn't hear the doorbell, we were out the back. When I opened the front door to put the same note back on it today, I found a huge box already sitting on the doorstep! It was heavy too. Bernard's Celestron binoculars had arrived. Thank goodness we brought an empty suitcase with us to transport any purchases home. Looks like we'll be needing it just for these!  Whilst Bernard inspected his parcel, Harrison couldn't wait any longer to get in the pool:

I soon joined him but there was no sign of Bernard for a good 45 minutes.  Harrison and I decided to take advantage by monopolising all of the inflatables:

It was really comfortable and relaxing with our legs on the lilo but it also served another purpose. Due to the thunderstorms of the past couple of days, the water was quite a bit cooler than usual. By keeping as much of my body out of the water as possible, I could still enjoy being 'in' the pool without actually being in the water!

Bernard was delighted with the card Harrison gave him:

If you remember, Harrison loves to torment him about their choice of football teams. He happily told Bernard that there was an Arsenal card too, but he didn't want to buy it!

Bernard had chosen to go to a place called the Cracker Barrel for his Father's Day lunch.  We had no idea what it was like but were intrigued to find out because every time we passed it, the car park was completely full.  We liked the look of the building too - it reminded us of a chain of American style restaurants back home called Smith & Western.

We entered into a shop crammed full of everything you could think of - from jewellery to toys; clothes to candles; homewares to foods, it seemed that there was nothing that you couldn't buy there! It gave us plenty to look at whilst we waited for a table.  Within 15 minutes we were seated and looking through the menu.  Instead of his usual diet coke, Bernard decided to try the unsweetened iced tea, which is a popular drink around here. One sip and he wished he'd stuck to the diet coke!

He really enjoyed the food though!  

After lunch we sat out on the veranda for a while in the rocking chairs provided, which you could also buy:

Had Bernard not got the binoculars, we may just have got away with bringing one of these back flat packed:

As a special Fathers Day treat, I thought that both boys would love a quick visit to the outlet mall 😆.

They really enjoyed helping me to choose a new bag in the Kipling shop!  We then went on the hunt for a book store. I've finished both of the books I brought with me and there's one by my favourite author that's really difficult to get in the UK, so we thought we'd see if we could find it over here.  It appeared that our sat nav wasn't completely up to date because the first destination it took us to was another outlet mall, with no book warehouse in sight.  By now it was 5:45pm and Bernard was concerned that the shops would be closing.  No chance! I think whoever created the shopping licensing hours over here must have been a woman.  During the week many of the stores are open until 11pm and on Sundays they don't close until 9pm - a shopaholic's paradise!

We ended up at Books A Million, next door to the Cinepolis down the road.  It's bit like a Waterstones but much bigger with a coffee shop and sells toys and games too. Despite its size, I didn't find my book but Harrison got some Spock (Star Trek) socks!