It has been said that Disney is the happiest place on Earth. Those that believe that have obviously never been to Boca Raton, Florida.

We truly hope that everyone has a place they consider a “home away from home”. For us that place is Boca Raton (technically Deerfield beach, but no one knows where that is). This little slice of heaven is one of our favorite places to be when we are not in our own homes. Ed’s amazing Aunt and Uncle own an adorable condo here, so getting to stay for no cost makes it even sweeter. We’ve gone every Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend for the last three years. It’s a framily tradition (insert Hank Williams, Jr. instrumental).

We’ve got the traveling and accommodations down to a science. We quickly learned that for the drive and the pure joy of being there an extra day is needed. So now we leave on Thursday afternoon and drive late into the evening. The guys are expert drivers and we are expert sleepers (for at least the second half). We arrive in the early morning on Friday and sleep for several hours. Then it’s important to get up, eat a meal of sandwiches somewhere, and head out to purchase groceries and essentials (i.e. beer). From there, we spend the next 2 and a half days soaking up the sun as much as possible.

One of our absolute favorite things to do in “Boca Cabana” (Deerfield Beach) is hang at our condominium’s pool. The condominium is not truly a retirement community, but it may as well be, as most of the residents have retired to this area. So it’s absolutely wonderful for us because it is so low-key. The pool sits out behind the condos in a lush courtyard like area and is right by an inlet, so gorgeous boats we dream of owning someday float by constantly. With the sun beaming down on you, can you really think of a better place to be? If your answer is anything other than “no way”, don’t answer, because we believe it’s magical. So the older folk get their water aerobics done early in the morning and throughout the rest of the day the pool only has a few visitors besides us. We bring a cooler with drinks (technically against the rules) and a speaker, then we are set for the day.

If our description of the pool doesn’t have you sold on this place just yet, then wait for it. The condo is also within walking distance of lots of hip and happenin’ places. By hip, we just mean some delicious restaurants, a hole in the wall dive bar, and the beach. But again, what more could you want?! You don’t want to be right on the beach because it gets hectic and driving can be a b*tch, so we love that we can just walk over whenever the feeling hits us. There is also a great bar and grill over that way called Bru’s and they have beer towers (100 ounces of beer!), so that’s another big plus. The guys love the beer towers and we love the guys after they’ve had beer towers.

Because we are ballin’ on a budget, we don’t go anywhere remotely fancy during our stay. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t found some seriously delicious food. We can get down with Charm City Burgers anytime (and hello, they were on the Food Network), and the last time we went we discovered the most amazing breakfast/brunch spot right across the street from the condo, The Sticky Bun. It seems tragic that we’ve missed out on it the last few years. The breakfast BLT is to die for. Seven insane pieces of candied bacon. Is your mouth watering?

The Wolfpack could have fun together watching paint dry, but we really like to step it up in the evenings. One of our favorite breweries, Funky Buddha, is in Boca, only about 10 to 15 minutes from our place. We Uber over and have a night filled with the yummiest beer, pretzels, and ping pong for days. As much as we love fancy breweries, one of our favorite stops during our stay is the hole-in-the-wall bar right across the street that we talked about earlier, lovingly referred to as “Cocktails”. Cocktails is a typical small town bar full of regulars that gawk at anyone looking like an out of towner. The people are friendly-ish, the drinks are cheap, and there are plenty of games and a juke box to keep all of us equally entertained (boys: play games, girls: dance their hearts out). We have become quite the legends there as our last experience involved us smashing the current record for the longest/highest Jenga game ever played. We don’t want to toot our own horns, but toot toot.