Vacation - Florida, January 2012

We spent a few days visiting my sister in Florida.

This is me at the beach.

That's about all the skin I'm willing to show ;-)

We had a great time.

We got out of the cold, stayed up late talking, played,

 and ate, because thats what we do.

I should add that my sisters husband is also my husbands brother.

To clarify, my sister and I married brothers.

It is awesome.

We really love getting together.

Can you see the resemblance?

The one on the right is mine.

This means that she and I can commiserate a lot about their quirks,

because they do have similar things that annoy us.

But we also count ourselves very lucky to be married to such great men.

It also means that our children are double cousins.

They have a darling three year old daughter, and twin one year old boys.

Her boys are so much like my boys.

I know their cries, their laughs and their smells.

I could not get enough of kissing and squeezing them.

I contemplated taking one home with me.

She has two!

Surely she wouldn't miss one. *wink*

And her daughter is just like I was when I was a little girl...

a girly girl who changes clothes 5 times a day and wants to marry Peter Pan.

(I always sympathized with Wendy when she gets angry because Peter and

Princess Tiger Lily are dancing together.)

We really have fun together.

*****

We went to Shark Vally in Everglades National Park.

The name is deceiving because there are no sharks.

But there are LOTS of alligators.

And you can walk right up to them, it was kinda scary....

I take that back, it was a lot scary.

I spent quite a bit of time shouting at one particular son who kept standing a little too close.

Next time I'm bringing a rope so I can tie him to me.

I'm pretty sure I grew a few new gray hairs because of it.

As you can see in the above picture, yes, we got close.

The park ranger told us that these gators are much more docile then gators in the wild.

And they haven't bitten anyone in years.

And as long as we stayed on the path we should be fine.

But I didn't want to be the family who broke that record.

This picture below on the right is a nest of baby alligators.

They were very cute... for an alligator.

The boys spent quite a bit of time plotting ways to catch one and take it home.

And when I say "boys" that includes the 30 year old "boys" also.

The alligator on the above left was the biggest one we saw.

Probably 7-8 feet long.

Yikes!!!

And of course we went to the beach.

It was a little overcast but we still had a really nice time.

Although I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a bit of a sunburn.

How am I supposed to come back home to the cold and make all of my friends jealous

if I don't have a sunburn? *sigh*

I love these shots of T chasing the waves.

B got buried in sand.

(Too bad there was no sand near by when we saw the alligators,

that might have been one way to keep him close.)

J and C spent most of their time in the ocean playing with boogie boards.

And I lounged on the beach and soaked it all in.

It was great.

Thanks for having us!

All of my love,