FLORIDA

Chris and I escaped to Florida with my family and had an amazing time! Thanks to my mom and dad, we vacationed in total high class luxury for an entire week! The best part was being together and we did so many fun things. The highlights: relaxing on the beach, parasailing over the ocean, the Miami night life, the swamp ride to hunt for alligators, my list could go on and on....

Our condo we shared with John and Kat

We had Mother's Day breakfast on the patio for mom

I could wake up to this every day...

We slept in every day, worked out on the beach and then
Chris had his favorite thing for breakfast...

Them waves are big, boys...

Seriously....

Steak Night! Soo goood. These babies were $30.00/pound...
If I'd been buying, we would have all shared one!
Chris and Thad tried to teach John how to grill...

...but John was more interested in what the girls were doing!

The Masters of the grill

In Heaven

We saw tons of these jelly fish on the beach...watch out for that stinger on the bottom!

Thad was the Birthday Boy while we were there and needed to get himself a Cuban cigar and a hat...
So off we went to Miami for the night!

Bienvenido a Miami..

Mom and Dad

John and Kat, who faired well with the Cuban Policeman..

The Birthday Boy and his chica

The hat, some good Cuban food and ghetto rap in the limo made for a really fun night.
John really shouldn't know those songs as well as he did....

This "personal"pizza is almost as big as John's head...wow, this was good italian!

Surviving parasailing...that is a death grip I have on Chris' hand...

The happy crew, all done flying!

I am so glad my sister was able to talk me into this parasailing thing! It was, hands down, my most favorite part of the trip! Once Chris and I got up there, the view was amazingand the ride was so smooth. We saw all kinds of things in the water below us...huge schools of fish, big turtles, and either a sting ray or a manatee. And then, on our way back to the boat, the driver dipped our toes in the water directly above an 8 foot bull shark! Unfortunately, they couldn't see it from the boat but we were pointing and gesturing so they knew something was below us! It was so exciting. I can' wait to try it again sometime!

Saying good-bye to the boat

Several hundred feet in the air.....amazing!

"just aim for the bullseye..." 

Me and the hubs

Our accomodations for the swamp boat ride...

I thought a swamp was full of trees and vines and snakes all over...

...but we did see some of these bad boys!

Captain Peanut on the "Beautiful Homes" waterway tour

Funny thing, in my excitement of seeing this little boat, I deleted the photo of Tiger Woods' yacht...

just kidding...

And look! We bought a new place for the winter...

...Chris' transportation, for the winter of course

Guess who brought the games for the last night???

Okay, fun story. While we were there, we kept seeing these little things popping up all over the beach:

Our hotel's beach man, Tony, was more than happy to introduce us to the Leatherback turtles that were in the process of nesting right there on our beach! Apparently, the island is HUGE into the conservation of these turtles and there is a turtle hotline that is called when a nest is spotted. The turtle crew reports to the site immediately to mark and tape off the area so the nest isn't disturbed. Tony told us all about them, that they follow the moon up onto the beach late at night to lay their eggs. He also told us that if we wanted to see them we could wait on the beach between 11pm-2am, but to be sure to be quiet, not bring any flashlights and not to touch them or they would head straight back to the ocean without nesting. Oh, I was soooo in! We went down one night, but it was so windy that we didn't stay long. We, okay I, was determined to see myself a turtle! So the last night we walked and walked up and down the beach, seeing absolutely nothing. It was pitch black, except for the moon, and that was a tiny bit creepy. Then all of a sudden, we stopped short. Maybe three feet in front of us was this not-so-little lady:

We crouched down on the far side of the lounger to watch. She was swishing sand around her for what seemed like forever! I had to get a quick picture so I snuck around the end of the lounger, got my camera adjusted to the lack of light and just as I took it, we heard a loud,"Hey! You can't do that!" from behind us. I nearly died right there on the spot. This lady had come out of absolute nowhere and was yelling at us to stop "harassing" the turtle. I "shushed" her at first, worried she would disrupt the nesting and then we would have trouble on our hands. I honestly thought she was drunk because she was so loud but maybe she was part of the turtle crew, we weren't sure. She went on and on about how we can be fined thousands of dollars, etc. etc. and just read us the right act. She finally left when Chris told her to "get out of here!" It wasn't long after that we decided it was time for us to high tail it out of there, just to be safe! But isn't she cool? She was a big old thing, covered in barnacles and bony plates. Not quite as cute as those turtles in Finding Nemo but she was really amazing to see!

We all flew out on Saturday afternoon so we spent the morning touring this little place and having lunch together one last time:

 John and Kat were on our flight with us to Atlanta and we had fun hanging out at the gate before the plane boarded. And, lucky for John, big sis was there to help him out when he got hung up in security with his C-PAP...

It looks to me like he is sweating....

Ah, good times! We laughed so hard and made some great memories on this trip. Thank you, Mom and Dad for all the effort to get us together and entertain us so well! Love you!