Florida!

Well, we're back! The kids did great on the flights, we had AWESOME weather, and I think three out of four of us are a little darker-skinned than when we left. :) (I think Max has Greg's skin tone...pretty sure he tanned better than I did.) I didn't put all of our pictures up here; the rest are on our Kodakgallery...I'll send it out to my contacts list, but e-mail me (or Greg) if you don't get it and want to.

One thing I have to mention to start off: I left our carryon containing ALL of the kids' clothes somewhere in the Atlanta airport. It made for an interesting first 18 hours in Florida, as we shopped Thursday night and Friday morning to replace what we lost. :( Thankfully, we found plenty of stuff and were able to get on with our vacation.
We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, getting there Thursday evening. We ordered room service for supper, and they brought in an entire table!

Mmmm...key lime pie. It was delicious!

The Ritz-Carlton has a beach club on Lido Key, very close to the hotel. The beach club is amazing, with a large pool with a zero-depth entry, a huge hot tob, and a kiddie pool that is only one foot deep (unfortunately, we didn't discover the kiddie pool until Monday). They also have a boardwalk out to the beach, with chairs and umbrellas all set up.

At the beach club on Friday...Max loves to find airplanes in the sky.

Our little beach boy

On Saturday morning, we went to Mixon Fruit Farm, an orchard about 20 min. away. They had a tour you could take of their orchards and also some animals that were part of the Matthews Wildlife Rescue program. They were animals that could never be released into the wild, but are used for educational purposes. Our guide was Justin Matthews, the founder of the MWR. He was quite a character and reminded me of Crocodile Dundee or something like him. :) Anyway, the first animals we saw were Wally the alligator and Elvis the baby alligator.

Listen to that hissing...that's Wally! It sounded pretty freaky and made me thankful for the fence between us.

Elvis sitting on Max's head. Max was not too impressed because he was very hot and very ready for a nap at this point.

Another animal was a Burmese python...I don't remember if Justin told us her name or not. I do remember that it was a female, but that's it. Anyway, my brave husband held the huge snake, but his chicken-hearted wife opted not to, much to his dismay.

One of my favorite animals was the huge tortoise. I don't know why, but I thought it looked so funny when it was eating its lettuce...

This guy was alot stronger than I gave him credit for. Max was running around and looked like he was going to climb on top of the turtle, and one of the other visitors asked if it would hurt it. The guide replied, "Naw, he could still walk with me standing on his back!" So, of course, the kids got a chance to ride the tortoise if they wanted. Max seemed to like it!

Saturday afternoon we headed back to the beach club, and Sunday we went to church in Sarasota. One of the couples in church, Jeff and Lynn Streitmatter, were having an all church potluck at our house that night, and they invited us. We had a great time; it was nice to be in someone's house and not in a hotel. Max loved running around in their backyard and, near the end of the evening, playing with some of their boys. He was pretty wound up, as you can see!

Here is Max on our balcony...we had a bay view straight out, and to the west we had a perfect view of the sunset.

Thankfully he couldn't fit through those rails, and thankfully he didn't throw anything through them the whole time we were there!

We didn't actually sit on the beach that much, just because the beach club was nicer as far as having Nora in the shade and keeping our stuff out of the sand. Here are some shots we got of the beach, though. Max liked the sand alot more than the water!

Looking down at the main pool from the beach club

Lovely.

Monday afternoon we went to the airport to pick up our bag that they found in the Atlanta airport and flew to Sarasota for us! We were glad to have it, as we needed every bit of baggage space we could get our hands on! On Monday night, for supper we went to a restaurant called the Roaring 20s. They have a HUGE organ that takes up one whole wall of the restaurant.

A family pic in front of one section of the pipes

The man playing the Mighty Wurlitzer

On Tuesday morning, we ate breakfast, gathered up all of our packed bags, and went to the beach club one last time before our flight out at 4:00. We did manage to get a few good family pics on the grounds of the hotel before we left, though.

Since we had our bag with the kids' stuff in it, Nora was able to wear her swimsuit one day, at least. :) She didn't go swimming in it, but loved just laying out on the beach chair in the shade.

Finally, after a couple hours at the beach, we packed ourselves up, ate a late lunch, and went to the airport. On both flights home, Greg and I each had empty seats next to us, which was very nice! I even took Nora's carseat on the flight from Sarasota to Atlanta. Here she is, happy to be in her carseat and headed home. :)

And now that we're here and it's a beautiful fall day, I have to admit that I'm glad to be home, even though I miss the hot sun, warm water, and white sand. It's nice to not be living in a hotel room anymore, even though our room was good and the service great. I like being home, however I do wish I could get out of doing this laundry. And making supper. Any takers? ;)