FLA day 6

The last day we squeezed in everything we hadn't done or wanted to do a few more times! We began at Turkey Creek Park. It is kind of like the jungle with a wooden walkway through it. I was waiting for a snake to drop out of a tree on my head the whole time, but (thankfully) no luck! The cool thing is the amount of turtles in there. At one spot there were about 40 underwater!


We hit the beach again, but were hesitant of the water this time because as we were leaving the last time, we saw a portugese man-o-war. Otherwise known as very poisonous jelly fish. YIKES! The pool was much safer and lots of fun. B blew up her bathing suit to help her float around.
K stuck to her favorite floaty.
After dinner, we went to pet the manatees, but no luck. We saw the snout of one a ways away, but he was shy of the crowd on the dock, I guess.
So we had to settle with a picture of one.
That wraps up Florida. We have actually been home since Thursday, but the 80 degree temp here over the weekend made for some serious procrastinating!

FLA day 5

Matt went back to Cape Cod and we headed to the zoo! The Brevard Zoo to be exact. The highlight? Feeding the giraffes! B LOVES (x 3000) giraffes! The girls got to feed them crackers. The zoo was so smart and had a platform so we were right at "giraffe" eye level!


B tried to take one home with us, but it's really hard to sneak a giraffe anywhere. 

There were lots and lots of birds. The girls and Grandma got to feed some of them. I just laughed, oh yeah, and took incriminating pictures of Grandma. I couldn't resist!

Food in the little cups. Must be like crack to these birds because they could not get enough of it!


Then we saw rhinos....

and alpaca......





and turtles! OH MY!
Nothing like dragging out a vacation for you all. One more day, OK?

FLA day 4

Our journey on day 4 begins at a man made wilderness area. The place "cleans up" poop and makes it good water. So to prove the point, they made this very large wilderness spot that has many little ponds and lush grass and trees. It is full of all types of birds and alligators and probably snakes, but thank goodness I didn't see one of them. I had to put my copyright on some of the pictures because I might need to use them for something. 

We drove around the area, although they said you could walk or bike. I am sorry, but there were no cages, electric wire or anything. We were right next to the animals and I really appreciated the metal of the car between me and the alligators!

We then continued on to the Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral. Matt had been there when he was younger(much younger), but it was my first time. The rockets ect were really cool and it is amazing to imagine them orbiting around earth. We saw a great IMAX movie about the international space station. What was even cooler, was that it was in 3D so we got to wear cool glasses. I made a little collage because I was having fun on picnik.com last night. The girls are standing in front of a life size photograph of some astronauts from the 60's. 

Blast off!

FLA day 3

We finally went to the beach today! It was a partly cloudy day, so I slathered on the sunscreen and then we all immediately went in the water where it washed off. I was thinking it wasn't too sunny, so didn't put more on. Not a good idea. We all had varying amounts of burns. Smarty pants Matt decided he didn't need any AT ALL. And he's a red head. And he was very sorry later. 

The waves were HUGE!!!!
We jumped them and got caught in a few.

Then we had to cool down with some Coldstone Ice-Cream. Right on the beach, how cool is that?

To celebrate Matt's birthday, we went to a restaurant called Squid Lips. 
They had a rockin' band there so B and Grandpa danced to the oldies and whipped up the crowd!
After dinner, we went to an outside bar on the beach. 

The girls got a little crazy with their dancing. I am not sure what the waiter put in their drinks!

Happy Birthday, Matt!

FLA day 2

Day 2 brings about Super Flea and Ron Jon's and the decision that we are renaming the motto for Florida, the tattoo state.

K's big trick is is that she can get on a floaty in the pool without getting wet. It is pretty impressive because none of us are as graceful in getting on a floatie.

The girls swam while Grandma got ready. Poor Grandma is a night owl and the rest of us are early birds. She'll be happy to sleep in after we go home!
We make a group decision and head to SUPER FLEA. The largest, scariest flea market I have ever been to. Not only do they sell pets, "designer" sunglasses, fruit and your basic chatchka, they sell weapons. Yup, knives, machetes, daggers, helmets to wear while you are in battle, and weapons I have no names for. You should have seen the people shopping for them. 

So after we ran out of there screaming....we went to Ron Jon's surf shop. A place that K has been dying to go back to since she first went 2 years ago. I would love to tell you the pull to this place is because we surf, but we don't. Maybe the pull is the cute sundresses?

The place is huge and happens to be open 24/7 incase you need a surf board at 2 am.  

I bought this for K. Hey it was only $6000! NOT!
These hats are the latest rage here. I say that because they had them at super flea, too.
Grandma tried to take Ron Jon's  car home.
When we got home, we found this....
Grandpa drinking a Bud in the pool. I think he is the new poster child for retirement.

After dinner, we went to look for some manatees. None seen, but got some cute pictures anyway!

Day 3 brings about hot, Florida sun!

FLA day 1

Hello from sunny Florida! Our flight down was a jumble of Murphy's Law, but we made it! Actually the Murphy's Law part was getting to the airport. Traffic and more traffic. We get to the airport and have to park on the roof of the garage and then walk 15 minutes to the terminal. We stand in line, check our bag and then stand in security. At security they nicely tell us to go back to the desk because when I printed out our boarding passes from home, the girls' names weren't on them. Back to that line, new boarding passes, back to security line to bathroom line to Dunkin Donut's line directly to boarding line. Thankfully, we got a free row of 3 seats in the last row of the plane! 

Love people watching on the plane. Don't you wonder about some of the shady characters that get on a plane? We were right next to the bathroom, so we got to see our fair share. Finally we arrived here...

Whoops, not the jungle. B loves giraffes and this giraffe happened to be at the airport. Then we arrived here, 
and went out to dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and Daddy (who got here the day before). We were enjoying the outside sunshine waiting for our pizza when it started to rain. Not before I got these cute pictures, though!
K and Matt
B and Grandpa

When we got home after having the best pizza and Coldstone Creamery for dessert, I challenged K to jump into the pool with only her undies on. I bet her $10 and she did it, much to my surprise! Then B jumped in as well because 'monkey see, monkey do'. 

And BTW, I am mooching some wifi off the neighbor to the left because I pick up the signal on the left side of the house. Thank you neighbor!

Grandma and Grandpa....Here We Come!

Regardless of yesterday's mishaps, the fam-damily is heading to Florida tomorrow! Well actually, Matt is heading there today and the girls and I, tomorrow. Yeah, nothing is easy in this house.

We were all booked together, when we found out the day of K's talent show would be today. Yeah, I get the good mom award for switching our flight until tomorrow. Well, I had to switch me and both girls because I made our reservations together and then when Matt decided he was coming too, I made a reservation for him. The airline would not let me switch just me and K, had to switch B too. So, Matt's parents get a day of him before the rest of the insanity ensues.

Matt's parents have been gone since the beginning of February so it will be good to see them! They live near Melbourne, so if any of you have any fun filled things to do around there, let me know. I know we are going to the zoo, Ron Jon's Surf Shop and Coldstone Creamery on the beach. Yes, we have our priorities! I must sit at the beach for at least 2 hours. Oh, yeah, and they have Super Walmarts near by.....ooooh I could spend the day in there!

What we will not be doing is going to Disney. Our Orlando time will be spent flying in and out of the airport. We love Disney so much, but we refuse to go on holiday weeks. Call me a Disney snob, but it is so much more fun and relaxing when you go at an off time. We will, of course, enjoy the Disney store at the airport and "pretend" that we went to the parks.

I'll post if I can find some wifi down there. They have that in Florida, right?

Musings

The pressure is on, I have gained a bunch of new "followers" in the past week! Now I feel I have to say something really clever and really, "I got nothin' ". I don't know how Vodka Mom deals with the stress of having over 700 followers! And yet, she always has something witty or poignant to say. My advice to you, is to go check some of my followers out. They are awesome!

A lot of what I have on my mind, I can't really write about, which is frustrating to me and to you. Yes, frustrating to you, because I do have funny spins on crappy situations that I just cannot write about. You'll just have to imagine them. 

The good thing that happened last night was that the new season of the Deadliest Catch started! OK, I was shocked that Phil couldn't go out fishing for king crab season! I hope he gets to go out for the Opie season. Then Keith got hit in the head. Oh the drama! It is like a soap opera on the Bering Sea with no sex (or women for that matter)! It's on the Discovery Channel.

My fisherman husband just walked in a 1/2 hour ago from his 36 hour fishing trip. It's funny how I can tell how he did just by his walk. He stomped in (give you a hint?), looked at some mail, sighed, walked into the room where I was sitting typing away, when I sweetly asked him, "How was your trip, honey?" (To know me is to love me, I am so not June Cleaver and when I say sweetly, it was more like "what happened".)

The answer? "No fish (this means he didn't catch as many as he wanted, not literally NO fish), lost nets (this means draggers-much larger boats-scooped up his nets when they were dragging the ocean floor for 'his' fish), no money (this means he didn't catch enough fish to outweigh the loss of the nets). Then he stomped up the stairs to get clean clothes so he could drive his fish to the processing plant. 

The man of few words dropped this all on me before 6 am. 

Maybe I should go back to bed. 

Happy Easter!

Easter weekend started off with some pretty interesting conversations about, well, Easter. One would think Easter was around just because bunnies are cute and we all love candy. Hmm, then why do we go to church on Easter? We had our big family Easter dinner on Saturday night, because my brother was down and he needed to leave in the afternoon today to get back for Easter with his girlfriend. We had a wonderful time and many, many laughs along with sugar. The 2 men that own a store downtown that my mom works at (very part time) came for dinner and one of them made these delectable Easter eggs that were ALL SUGAR! I would say you would be awake for a week if you had eaten a whole one, the hell with Red Bull! Anyway, so that left us with the candy trail to the Easter baskets this morning and then once again to mom and dad's for breakfast.
We happened to pass by our church on the way to Dunkin Donuts and B noticed the cross in the front yard. "Why is there a cross on the front yard?"
me, "Because Jesus was crucified on the cross."
B, "What does that mean?"
K, "You know when they nailed his wrists to the cross and he died."
B, "What? They nailed his wrists? Like with a hammer?"
me, thinking good Lord we need to go to church more often... "Yes, that is what the cross is for. What is Easter for?"
B + K, " The day he died."
me, "Ugh! NO!"
Matt (the only Catholic in the car), laughing
me, "It is the day he was resurrected. Good Friday was the day he died. And what do you think Maundy Thursday is?"
B, "A Canadian Holiday?"

I was speechless after that, so will have to show you some pictures of the egg hunt wtih the 35 mph wind and the 30 degree temps. This is spring, right?

Barren egg hiding bush...
K, counting her eggs....

B, determined to find more than her sister...Gretel thinking that an egg would taste good about now...

The $1 parachuting bunny and egg were the biggest hit of the day...


Hope you all had a great Easter OR a great Passover OR that you enjoyed the new Canadian Holiday (Maundy Thursday)!