Tampa mid to late January

Jackson ended up having to go back to Indiana for a week to train his replacement at work. I stayed back in Tampa with MacKenzie

I took some Pilates classes, went to a new trainer, went to a new dentist for a cleaning and just over all settled in to our new place.

MacKenzie redecorating

MacKenzie waiting on me outside the
 grocery store we walked to

We have a pretty nice Winn Dixie just behind our apartment complex. Even though this is a really nice area, there are still criminals working. I had reusable bags in the cart and was wearing my purse. I walked away from my shopping cart and came back to a guy riffling through my bags looking for my wallet. Luckily our family friend Patty has always warned about leaving your purse in the cart and I am careful to heed that advice. The guy ran away when I asked him how he liked my reusable bags. While this wasn't a huge deal, it did rattle me a bit as I'd never had anything like this happen to me. Jackson was actually with me, but he was in a different part of the store and missed the whole ordeal.

In good news we both had MLK Day off so we lounged by the pool and just relaxed.

Reading by the pool on MLK Day

The folks of Tampa are obsessed with this festival they call Gasparilla. A prate ship comes into the bay and then they have a parade for kids one weekend and a parade for adults the next weekend. We walked down after the kids parade to see the fireworks and things. It was pretty neat.

The pirate ship

Petefish

Grilling in January

We really have enjoyed the weather down here, though.

MacKenzie continues to be adorable.

Unfortunately not everything has gone well. The garage where we park is supposed to be secured. We had our bikes locked up there and as I left one evening to pick Jackson up from dropping off his rental car for work I noticed that our lock had been cut and the bike had been stolen. WHAT!!!

Missing a bike! UGH!

We also have not been impressed with how the Mexican restaurant across the street, The Green Lemon, turns into a night club 5 times a week. The street is so loud and after an attempt of a purse theft and the theft of our bike we were on edge. Then our door appeared to have been messed with and we had to have the locks replaced. All of that together lead us to contact the building manager to explore the ability to move out early.

MacK soaking in some sun

We'd not officially decided to throw in the towel until the wild weekend of Gasparilla. Our apartment complex threw a party that we did go by. As the morning went on the neighbors blared music and the wild antics outside were hard to ignore. We were going to be in Naples early the next week anyway to take Susan to the airport so we decided to just leave early.

Getting in the Gaparilla spirit with a
dog cookie

It is not a good thing that 3 weeks in and we are already looking to escape our new home. We decided that we were likely better off cutting our losses and moving out. Our last day in Tampa will be March 9th. We've been staged in Naples (again).

Back in Naples!

We did have to return to Tampa for a couple of days as Jackson went to Orlando, but once he was home we didn't know why were there when we could be in our happier place of Naples so we came back down. It stinks that Tampa is not going to work out, but Jackson has talked to his boss who doesn't care where we live in Florida. We now are looking for places to rent down here. Things will be in limbo for a while as we wrap things up in Tampa, make visits back home to Indiana, I go to Savannah for work and Jackson is all over Florida for work. Tax season will be in full swing soon and we are just trying to get as ready as we can. Life isn't always easy, but we're glad to do it together.