Vacation at the beach

Well, it is Thursday night, and I think I am finally caught up with  putting  all of our vacation clothes and stuff away. Even though we kept up with the laundry, I still seemed to have some when we got home.

We left for Fort Lauderdale last Thursday, and stopped to see my grandpap on the way.  I wish he wasn't so darned far from here. I would have liked to seen him more than that.  But we had a nice visit and dinner with him and his sister.

Fort Lauderdale was great. The weather was perfect,  and we spent alot of time swimming with the kids. 
The beach was gorgeous, even though the water was a little too rough. We saw  many spots on the beach that were marked  for Sea Turtle Nests. The awesome thing about that, we went to the beach  very early  one morning to see the sunrise, and we saw the patrols checking the nests.  They stopped at one, so when they left we went over to check it out, and amazingly, we could see the baby sea turtle tracks . Thanks to my neice for wanting to go early, because we would have missed that  wonderful experience.  The baby turtle tracks are so tiny, and when you see how far the tracks go before they disappear in the sand near the water , you realize what an epic journey the little critters are really making at the very beginning of their lives.
Now THAT is a critter that does not bother me in the least.

My mom and neice and I went to the Butterfly World.  I have never seen so many butterflies in one place. They were so beautiful. And while we were there for the butterflies, my favorite part of the exhibit was seeing all of the  hummingbirds that were there too.  The birds were so close you could touch them. I have a hummingbird feeder, but the birds never stay still long enough to observe them that closely.


Another super experience we had was to  go on an airboat ride, like they use in the everglades.  Those boats are so loud that they provide you with earplugs. On our ride we sw two gators, and they seemes completely comfortable with the boat  and came up almost curiously, ( or looking for food , Lol). Josh seemed a little nervous, and he leaned over and  old me that the gator was looking at him. 

We had a great time,  drank lots of beer, ate a lot of great food,  did some shopping and met some interesting people. ( Hello Ladies!)