Hello from regular, post-vacation life!

I’m just about unpacked and ready to start back to life’s routine.  Just about.

I am such a sucker for pastel colored food!  I saw these little ready made sundaes in the ice cream case as I hustled my way to the bathroom on a pit stop heading home.  We picked up the coconut patties as a little treat for my grandparents.  The Neapolitan bar was mom’s snack–that kind was always a favorite of my father.  He also loved Zagnut candy bars. Have you ever had one of them? Have you tried these sundaes?

Another fun fact: the gas station sold six packs of my favorite Catawba Brewing Company beer: White Zombie.  I love seeing micro-brews creeping their way across the state!

There are a few things from the trip that I forgot to tell you about.

The clown doll from Day 2 got SOLD!!!  I was back at the same store two days later and the clown doll (and a few other dolls) were gone.  I am so happy about it!  Truthfully, the clown would probably made it’s way into my life otherwise.

There were two funny things that I saw but couldn’t get a picture of in time.  One was a weird little convertible police car that was parked next to the Ruby Tuesday in Ormond beach.  THERE WAS A STORM TROOPER IN IT.  As I was writing this post I googled “storm trooper in Daytona” and this popped up!  Of course a picture of this made it to instagram!

The other thing was a sign for a pawn shop on Ridgeway, down toward the Port Orange area–their marquee read: WE BUY SMART PHONE TAXIDERMY TABLETS. Doesn’t get much better than that in signage!  ❤

These animals are certainly NOT taxidermied.

(Patti Smith and Duck get frisky with their friend; Fraidy hides.)

While mom and I were gone, Mr. Smith took care of the cats.  As and extra thanks (besides the silly touristy trinkets) I took him out to eat at Saigon Garden.  I got this fortune!  Haha!  We certainly did have a pleasant trip.  As a side note, if you live in the area and like Asian food, you MUST go to Saigon Garden.  I always get the V#6: fried tofu with rice noodles, cucumber, bean sprout, and peanuts.  Go ahead and drool over the menu.

Sunday was race day down in Daytona.  Back in the old days when my mom and granddaddy would go to the race, my grandmother and I would stay at the condo.  I told y’all about the writing in the sand trick (boy it sure didn’t work this year!) but there is another tradition I forgot until about lunch time yesterday: Macaroni and Cheese.  We always had fancy boxed shells and cheese for lunch on race day.  I had no boxed stuff at home, but I did have the goods to make it from scratch. (I promise to do a post about making it from scratch some day soon because it is SO GOOD.)  I had a random bag of lemon pasta from Aldi that I used since that was all I had.  Dang if I wish I hadn’t bought more bags of it!  Typical.  Anyway, here are some pics of the end product.

That’s about it for my vacation wrap up.  Happy Monday to everyone!