Have you been to Siesta Key?   It’s near Sarasota, FL and a super pretty beach community. My brother, Sheryl and baby Brennan were down last weekend, so we headed South (maybe an hour and 15 minutes from here) and Jeff and Ellen were able to join us.  We had some family business to take care of–that we all had been putting off for almost a year.  More of that to come…

We arrived at Sheryl’s family’s condo (her parents were down also).  Look at this road that you walk to the beach on.  Spectacular.

I was ecstatic to see Brennan.  I hadn’t seen him since he was a month old.  That’s way too long.   He’s such a chill, good little baby and was more than happy to appease me with some photos…must be related to me!

While B Man took a nap, Sheryl and Phil took us to SKOB for lunch.  What a fun place.  SKOB is Siesta Key Oyster Bar.  I like SKOB (seems like the cool, “in” people would call it SKOB).

Loved all the decor–and especially the Wrigley Field Light in the corner!  Great food, one of the best grouper tacos I’ve had…

Live music (and Harley’s, being driven by a dude with the longest dredlocks we’d ever seen) were arriving as we were done =(

We headed back and down to the beach to chill.  The only one who went in the water–was my bro.  This is his “Charlie’s Angels” shot of him coming out of the water–that I told him about after the fact….

Kaysers and Wilsons…

and some of B Man in the water.  Isn’t his outfit adorable?

I made Sheryl’s family get in on the action (I’m such a pain)….

This is my FAV pic…love it! 

and because I just can’t stop editing..I made them into Pop Art too haha…

We had such a great day with the fam and I was sad to say goodbye, but knew we’d be back to Chicago in a few months, so that helped.  See ya B Man!!!

Now…for the other business of the day…Jeff, Ellen, CW and I were off to show their mom (Dianne) some respect.  She passed away last year, November 8th (her birthday also, which is still odd) and had lived in Sarasota in her younger days.  We knew that at some point we wanted to put her in some good spots here. 

First stop–the cemetary where the boys’ grandfather was (good ol Bernie).  We all split up and scoured the mausoleums, hunting him down.  There was a groundskeeper totally staring at us, I’m sure wondering what the h*ll these hoodlums were up to, running all over the corn maze of mausoleums, making a racket.  We were trying to make jokes and lighten the mood a bit, so it wasn’t so somber.  CW found him (insert the big celebration that ensued)…and then we noticed that his “E” in Bernard must have fallen off and they replaced it with an “A”.  Ah—-if that isn’t so rude???!!!!!  Or, are we the rude ones who haven’t been here to notice?  Whatever, note: contact cemetary peeps to re-spell his name…

Again, another opportunity for humor (as many more moments of laughter would show themselves as the day went along).  As if that little spelling error wasn’t bad enough, Jeff then noticed that they also added a “L” to the end of Levkoff.  Look again, his name should be Bernard A. Levkoff…who do they have working here cause they need some spelling tutoring stat!?  We gave Bernie a little Dianne love (no pictures this time, that would have been weird) and were off to the next spot on the Dianne Tour.

We passed her old high school, which is straight up out of the Grease movie (Rydel High).  Can’t believe I didn’t get a pic.  Pretty cool.  Bernie used to own THE bowling alley in Sarasota–it was THE place to be, so it was off to Sarasota Lanes.  I’d heard so much about this place.

The boys had their moments down memory lane, reminiscing and telling us stories.  For Ellen and I it was pretty special.

They were super impressed that they actually have live music there!!!  The guys who were working were totally young and cute (in a high school way, not a cougar sort of way), so I’m betting it’s still THE place to be.

Ok, boys, let me capture this, get in the picture…last one (maybe not) =)

Next up was Bernie’s old condo.  The boys said it hadn’t really changed much after all these years.  They’d spent tons of time there and it was so peaceful right on the water. 

Ellen and I were giving props to Bernie. What a pretty pad.  We knew it was definitely the place and time.

So, here ya go MA…

Perfect weather and without a doubt it felt right.  Just as we were starting to walk a bit and take a little moment to gather our thoughts, we looked back as a big gust of wind blew Dianne–and a certain important memento started flying right towards the water.  HOLY CRAPPPPP as we went running…..”get your MA”, “whoaaaaa”, “MAAAAAAAAA”.  You can imagine the commotion that went on.  Kind of like Tom Hank’s “Wilsoooooonnnn” in Castaway.

Who was the fastest and the one that ultimately saved the day—8 months pregnant Ellen.  Yay Ellen!!!!!!!  She’s fast when she’s on a mission-must be the maternal instinct kicking in.  See, I told you there were funny things that kept happening.  Now we knew, for a fact, that Dianne was with us…intent on not making this a sad moment, but one that we would chuckle about and never forget.  We were full-on laughing as we headed to dinner…good ol Dianne.

LOVE Ceviche’s in Sarasota.  It’s an old 1924 building, that used to house “The Times”.  CW and I had been there once before and wanted Jeff and Ellen to go.  It’s pretty cool, 4 stories of history wrapped up into a fantastic Tapas restaurant…we have a couple of Ceviche’s in our area, but nothing beats this building.

 A little Happy Hour action on the rooftop deck…

To see the sunset and make an important cheers to Dianne…

The boys in the elevator–not surprising, the day had made us all a little loony (they do look a little bit like serial killers, no offense, totally friendly and fun ones).  Just chalk it up to a day filled with oddities…

I represented the Hawks…well, I guess CW did too, cause his t-shirt was Hawkeyes also.  Weird, just noticed that.

This was the “Amazing Race” of all dinners (CW tried to talk me into applying to that show a few years back, fyi).  We just kept ordering and ordering, in “rounds” of tapas.  Round 1.

Round 2..Paella. Yum.  We actually forgot we had ordered it, so when it showed up, it was like a gift.

Round 3.  Not that we noticed, but I’m assuming that we had to have been making a scene, with the insane amounts of food that were piling up on a little 4 top table.  “Put that on the table behind us”, “Ah, just stick that on the floor”, “Is this a candle, do we need it, can you take this away”…priorities I tell ya–just keep the food coming, we’ve had a long day.

 Round 4.

and the ultimate finale…both boys were more than eager to order A dessert (but because they are Wilsons and obviously share a brain, they both ordered TWO each, thinking they were being sneaky and would “surprise” us, insert loud laughs and cheers here), so this was Round 5 Dessert.

Never ones to disappoint…we marched on!!!  We won the Amazing Race!!  To give you some insight into the fun, feisty times, filled with off-the-wall conversations that we all have together….here’s how dinner ended.  I pulled out my Iphone and entered all of our “bets” in the “notes” section.  Who wold be the closest in guessing the total of the bill?  Jeff won (winner, winner chicken dinner was excitedly inserted here).  I was expecting it to be a doozy, so my estimate was way too high.  Guess that means it was a bargain.

Isn’t the inside cool?  Our table was up there on the second floor in the back left corner.

We couldn’t have planned a better day in Siesta Key and Sarasota with the fam!!!  Lots of laughs and lots of love.  Feeling lucky.

 and as I got in the car, I still had Dianne right there, MUAH lady, We Love Ya.