Ivory Leaves Her Family for a Better One in Florida

(July 27th, 2021)

Guest post: Ivory Cazier. The favorite. Obviously.

So as many of you may know, my best friend, Annie, moved to Florida last year. We spent the beginning of June goofing off and enjoying our last moments in Utah together. Later in the summer though, we planned for me to go out and spend a couple days with her in Florida. So off I went, flying solo for the first time, ready to see the world. Or more just like Florida and my best friend. And her family. That'd be her brother, Zach on the right. I call him Zachary. 

The first day we had basically just planned to paint her room. The walls were white and she had convinced her parents to let us write in paint pen on her wall. My color is pink from writing in pink pen when I write her letters. Hers is blue. And then we also do silver for me and gold for her. So we had some paint pens and set off to write random crap on her wall until it was all filled up.

We set off but encountered a minor issue right at the beginning. The first navy blue paint pen broke and spilled on her pants and all over her hand. She had been sitting on her bed but the sheets were safe. Of course we immediately took pictures before cleaning it up. 

It also soaked through her pants as we discovered. We both agreed she looked like some sort of Smurf on her period. Would've been a bad day for that Smurf. 

Honestly the pictures are all funky and out of order so I have no idea what came on which days so we're gonna leave chronology behind. We did go to mutual that evening, I remember, because her mom didn't want her to go with paint all over her hand but we couldn't get it off. Mutual was just a game night and I taught some girls Throw Throw Burrito and then of course smashed them.

We went to the temple at some point. It was the Fort Lauderdale temple and it was so beautiful. Before we went in we found a dead frog in the fountain. I feel like it should be remembered for forever but I don't want to make this all difficult with a video. Plus the video isn't that good so the random detail will have to suffice. We also had someone in the group take our picture and I look super short but the temple is beautiful so that makes up for it. 

On one of the mornings, we woke up super early (and her mom did too cause she's the best) and drove to Dania Beach and watched the sunrise while we wrote in the sand. We talked about maybe someday doing an album cover photoshoot there someday and I would be so down to go back, it was so pretty. 

There was so much wildlife there just randomly. We went to the grocery store after that and there were these weird birds just chilling. And also a Momma Duck with her baby ducklings running around through the parking lot drinking out of puddles. They were adorable. 

We also went to the Flamingo Gardens which was like a mini zoo basically. The wildlife there was also beautiful. Lots of birds. I actually found a peacock feather and carried it around for a while til we got in trouble. We got harassed by a goose and also a flamingo but the flamingo was less frightening and more silly. We went on a little trolley around the place and our tour guide told us lots of cool facts about the plants and animals there. I remember exactly zero but it was still cool. 

We went to the beach again (different beach -- this one was called Jupiter and we drove through a Florida rain storm to get there) later and played in the water and I learned once and for all that I don't super love the ocean so I collected a ton of shells and we made matching necklaces with two that randomly just had holes in them.

On the last night we went to dinner at a place called Chuy's and it was super good. In general the trip was such a blast, from a run in the humidity in the morning, a walk in the rain in the afternoon, and a swim in the pool at night (which we actually did all of those things at one point). It was so good to see Annie again and it's a shame that I couldn't go this year too. And in honor of the insane amount of ugly selfies that Annie took while I was with her, I will put my 5 favorites to finish off this post and randomly she's in her swimsuit for all of them. Honestly, if you knew Annie, you would know this post wouldn't be complete without ugly selfies. She's such a goof sometimes but she's the best best friend I could have ever asked for and the only banana for my angel.