A weekend in Miami

The best birthdays are the birthdays where I don’t have to do a single thing other than show up.

My amazing hubby surprised me with a birthday getaway in Miami, he literally did everything… he packed my bag with all new outfits, dresses, shoes, and a new bikini. He stole my phone and took over my Instagram stories (you can watch them on my Miami highlights) to tell my followers about the surprise even before he told me, and wrote a blog post complete with a selfie photoshoot w/ the kids! He even tricked me into self-tanning for a photoshoot the day before the surprise! And to top it off, he had babysitters scheduled to watch our daughters all weekend. He literally did every👏 single👏 thing👏 to get us ready for a vacay!

Day 1: Living in a bikini

We stayed at Hotel Victor. I highly recommend staying there! It’s right on Ocean Drive in South Beach and is surrounded by restaurants, beaches, cafes, and the Miami energy. The hotel lends out bikes for guests so we went on beautiful bike ride down Ocean Ave to grab coffee, snacks, and explore a little.

We found an amazing taco place called Naked Taco which serves the BEST (and most expensive) tacos I’ve ever had! I accidentally only ordered a single taco because I didn’t realize I was supposed to order multiple since the price for one taco was like $9 or something crazy like that.

I was quite hungry after eating a single taco for dinner so we hopped across the street over to Mammamia Gelato for dessert. Honestly though, even if I had eaten 100 tacos I still would have gone for some gelato… because it’s not a birthday celebration without ice cream!

Day 2: Still in a bikini

After all the food we ate on the first day I, of course, had to find a way to get some exercise in – without missing out on living like a local. To start off, I went for a jog down the winding South Beach trail, which led to one of those outdoor gyms (in Lummis Park) which was so cool and felt like we were in an episode of Burn Notice. haha. We sat for a while and watched the muscley body-builders and cross-fitters do their thing before we tried to be like them by playing exercising on their playground gym 💪.

It was lots of fun watching so many (extremely fit!) people come there to workout outside and to run on the trail – especially in the 100% humidity 90° weather.

After loosing about 5lbs from just sweating I was craving some high-carb food. Our hotel had a great lunch spot and I ate the best club sandwich I’ve ever had, or maybe I was just really hungry, haha 🤷. Either way, it was a perfect afternoon for an outdoor lunch along Ocean Drive!

I did get some photos of lunch, but I doubt you want to see those. So here are some photos by the pool instead:

Next up, we hung out by our hotel pool. I tried to relax and nap but ever since having kids I am not awesome at doing nothing (I’m working on it!), and since the sun was at peak 3rd-degree-burns levels it didn’t take long before I traded my cabana in for a dip in the pool.

That evening we met up with friends that by sheer coincidence happened to be in Miami at the same time. This always happens to us… we never make time to get together with friends here in Orlando, apparently we prefer to hangout with friends only when we travel. We ate “al fresco” (thank you Fancy Nancy Sees Stars📖 for teaching me this word 😂) along Ocean Drive again, this time at a restaurant called il bolognese.

when we are on a date we aren’t allowed to talk about the kids

After a fun night catching up and talking about how hard it is to not talk about our kids when we are away from them (David and I have a rule where when we are on a date we aren’t allowed to talk about the kids – and it’s really hard to not break this rule!) we took one last walk down “the strip”, shot a few photos in the hotel lobby (below), then turned in for the night like the old-folks we really are 👵👴.

Day 3: One more bikini

We decided to wake up before the sun so we could get down to the water to watch the sunrise on our last morning without the kids. I know most parents would probably choose to sleep in on a vacation without the kids, but it’s rare we get to see the sunrise and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see it – and of course get a photoshoot in! The gold glow of the morning sun along the long and quiet sandy beaches of South Beach are so beautiful!

After wrapping up our sunrise photoshoot it was time to head to breakfast. We ate at Florida Café, we had a perfect breakfast outside (and some pretty terrible coffee 😭) and enjoyed our last moments in the crazy and beautiful Miami.

Do you notice the pattern here? 1) bikinis and 2) Miami has some of the best food I have had in Florida!!!! I promise we did more than lounge, eat, and drink on this trip! ^{(no, actually, that’s a lie)}

Thank you, my love, for putting together such a special birthday weekend, you love me so well. I am so grateful for all the work you put into making my birthday absolutely perfect, I love you!