::florida part 2::

Too bad about the nude sunbathing--but I sure do love the beach, so I guess it's ok. Here are a few views of our first hotel area from out on the beach. It was very picturesque.

Old people everywhere of course, even in bikinis. Yikes.

The next one shows you the big main building of the hotel--it looks kind of like some sort of polynesian lounge.

We were up high in a room in the tower on the left. We had an awesome view from our little balcony!

Can you believe how many huge high rise hotels there were along the beach?

The shells were so fun--I've never seen a place with so many shells. From something we read it looks like the shells are on the beach in piles during certain times in winter. By summer the tides have washed them all away. How crazy is that?
I picked up some awesome ones and brought them home to share with Max. He could hear the ocean in most of them.


After the conference was over we headed up the coast about a hour or so to another little island. This one was much quieter and less fancy. There were also more old people there somehow. The beach was not as fun there--tiny teeny waves--but the most fun part about it was that Kris and I had a couple of days with no work, no conference, nothing. We just got to hand out and have fun.
We rode beach cruisers to lunch (and ate with droves of old people dressed in the colors of sherbet).

We took walks. We chatted. We sat in the sun. We played tennis.

(We play tennis badly, but it's fun.)
It was just so nice. We were glad to go home to our boys, but so sad that our couple of fun days were over.
Thanks SO much to Kathy for coming and taking care of our guys. I didn't have to worry about them being safe and happy. I knew they were in the best hands they could be. We LOVE you Kathy!!!

And really, who can complain about coming home to this:



What a great week. And I got to come home on my birthday to a party. Awesome.

::disney fun 2::

More fun to report on!
We got to visit all the parks on our little jaunt, though we didn't get to ride or visit everything that we hoped to. The Soarin' line was so long that we had to give up at Epcot, and the Peter Pan ride in the Magic Kingdom was hopeless.
We did get to do the Toy Story one though, and the new Star Tours (which was awesome enough to make me carsick!)
We got to eat a lot (too much) decent to good food and the weather was PERFECT. It didn't rain on us once and it was never warmer than 80 degrees.

We got to introduce Grandma to the fun of pin trading. Max got to ride the Rocking Roller Coaster for the first time and he was brave enough to go right back on again after.
Here we are hanging out waiting for one of our many meals to show up.



Probably the best part of the whole trip was getting to spend time together doing stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with work!
And the second best thing was undoubtedly the weather. It was so nice to have weather like that in the middle of our winter.

The sad news is that Sandy got sick the night of our second to last day. He got a big fever and was so miserable. So he was up half the night and then slept most of the next day. Kris went home that morning to get some work done, and the rest of us were supposed to play. I sent Kathy and Max to the Magic Kingdom and watched over little Sandy.
Finally he woke up and we all met up for lunch.

The poor little guy did his best to be a good sport. Then Grandma took him back for more napping and Max and I got to play for a while. This is a picture she sent me later that night.

He felt a lot better by then, thank goodness and was actually eating. You can see his little pink cheeks though--they're the give away that he's still a little sick!
Why do kids always get sick on trips?
The flight home was a bit trying with a slightly sick exhausted baby, but Max was perfect.

But that's getting ahead of myself.
Max wanted a churro the whole trip and we had such a hard time finding one. But finally on the last day when Max and I were exploring the Magic Kingdom I spotted some people enjoying churros. I stopped them and asked where the heck to find them. We finally found them and snarfed them.

(Check out Max's awesome pins. He did some good trading on this trip.)

And last for now, but not least I have a picture of Sandy riding the ant at the "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" playground. Max LOVES that place.

Sandy liked it too, but the uneven-ness and texture of the ground made him feel a little weirded out.
I will leave you with a pretty awesome video of the crawling that resulted. True Mowgli crawling. He also fell on his little head several times because he got so unbalanced. I think that's what happened right when I stopped the video. Wish I would've gotten it documented. It was hilarious.

I'm going to report on the running later!