Florida Vacation

The week before Thanksgiving we went on couples vacation with R's mom, dad, brother, and sisiter-in-law to Florida. It was our first vacation away from the kids since we'd had them. It was a lot of fun and we got to do a lot, but also did a lot of relaxing. The kids were at home with my mom going to school and having fun with her.

Here are all of the girls on the first day of vacation. We travled on R's mom and dad's boat.

Here are the guys. Remember, it was the first day, I promise, they did tan those bellies :)

As we were travling, we went down the intercoastal. At one point, we had a dolphin play in the wake of the boat. It was so close that we were worried it'd get hit by the props. It also jumped at one point and got us wet! It was amazing!

In Venice, we used the marina bicycles to get around the town. It was so much fun! Here we all are.

We rode through a park full of these big trees, so we had to climb one and take a pic. Of course my husband is the only one "monkeying" around!

This was on Cabbage Key where we had lunch the second day. It was a beautiful setting. Just a word of caution though...if you ever go there for lunch...DO NOT HAVE THE TAP WATER! It's NASTY!

This was for the kids. The resort that we stayed at for most of the week was totally decked out for Christmas. It was beautiful and we wished we could have seen ALL of the lights light up that they had out. I'm not sure I've ever seen so many lights in one place. Unfortunatly, the transformers blew the second day we were there and we were out of power for over a day. But it was so nice outside, that we spent pretty much the whole time outside.

The sunsets were Amazing. This is just one of many that I have pics of.

Here are all of the "kids."

So the day that the power was out, we decided to rent mopeds so that we could get to another island that did have power. They were SO much fun. We didn't want to return them the next day.

One of the nights we went to the Mad Hatter for dinner. It was such good food and had an amazing view. We went there for sunset and the windows were huge. It was a great dinner.

On the last day, the surf finally got a little rough. Most of the time we were there, there were no waves to play in. But on the last day, they started to roll. We went out and played in them for about an hour. We had so much fun letting them toss us around.

R and I went back to the marina before we left for home and while we were there, we saw this manatee hanging out. At one point he was so close to the pier that I could have touched him. He was so neat to see. There was moss growing all over his back and you could see a couple of spots where a boat prop had hit him. They are great creatures.