Florida Trip

Back in the early spring, Aaron was working on a very time demanding client. As he was finishing up the project, he was given the opportunity to take a few days off. We decided to take the kids on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Florida. It was a fun trip (except that William was at the end of a very scary Roseola incident) and nice to go somewhere as a family. We really miss Aaron a lot when he is working so much!

We went to Destin, Florida. It is one of the closest beach towns, about 6 hours away from us. The sand was beautiful, the ocean was cold, and the weather was quite nice.

Jonathan was so cute in his little hat! Emma loved playing in the ocean. She would go out into the water with Aaron, and she would try to get him to further and further out into the ocean. This is the swimsuit she chose for herself this year. She says that it is a cool girl swimsuit. I think she looks like a super cute, surfer girl in it! Jonathan was being so cute that I couldn't stop taking his picture! He just kept giving me the cutest smiles! (William was sitting in my lap the whole time, feeling pretty yucky.) Here are both the boys, in one of the rare moments that William wasn't on my lap! William and Jonathan playing with sand toys. Self-beach-portrait, with William on my lap. (I had to get a picture of myself with some sand in the background!) We went to a restaurant called "Fudpucker's." The food was decent, extremely overpriced, but we had fun anyway! A lot of fun! This restaurant also boasted its live alligators. There was a "pit" in the front of the restaurant, and these were the alligators. Don't know if you can really tell here, but they were babies. Maybe pre-teens. They were all pretty small. So, we went somewhere else to see the big guys!

We went to a place called the "Gulfarium." It was kind of like the aquarium/zoo only with gulf animals. We saw these huge alligators. They were much scarier than the baby ones. But, they hardly moved. We also saw a "multi-species" show, which consisted of a dolphin and a sea lion. They did some pretty cool tricks, like this one (above). The sea lion is holding a fish in its mouth, and the dolphin jumped out of the water to get it! In this trick, the sea lion and the dolphin are kissing. The sea lion could also throw trash in a trash can, which gave the gulfarium trainers a good opportunity to talk about throwing trash in trash cans and not in the ocean. There was a dolphin show we also watched. This dolphin is jumping through a hula hoop. (See the ocean and the pier in the background?) And finally the pier at Fort Walton Beach. People were fishing off the pier and these very large birds were all over the place. This one got so close to Aaron and Emma, so I took their picture with it! (If you look closely, you can see some of these birds standing on the light poles.)

We had a great time. And, one of the parts I am most proud of is: my "bet" with Aaron. We drove past a PacSun outlet, and we decided we could both use a new tshirt or two. Aaron bet me that I couldn't go in and get us both a shirt in under 10 minutes. And, I went in and got us both a shirt in 7 minutes! I win! (Unfortunately, we didn't really wager anything in the bet. But, I did get a new shirt out of it!)