Duck, duck, goose!

Grandpa popped a big bag of popcorn and we were off to the nature park. 

I was surprised at the crowd that welcomed us!

Both kids were a little hesitant to feed the birds, they just liked to chase them.

Bella had a goose come right up in her face. A few tears were shed, but we had a great time!

Holidays

We had a  wonderful Christmas visiting family that we don't see often, and also the ones we do see often :)
It was fun to have Justin around this year and hear his stories of living in India.
We got to go bowling, kids went sledding, had Justin's homecoming report, and we partied with lots of good food. Now that we're home it seems like there just isn't anything good around to eat.

These two keep us all smiling. On to a new year, hope to make it a good one!

Welcome Home Elder Barrick!

 My little bro is home from India. 

Its going to be a Merry Christmas!

Goodbye Florida

The end of our trip found us lounging by the pool, relaxing, and catching another movie. It was a sad day to come home. We let the kids dig for their seashells in some sand that was put into buckets. They loved it. It was wonderful to come home to a Thanksgiving meal and a few more day to recover from being gone. 

Grand Bahama Island

Day 6  Being new to the whole "real" vacation experience we learned many things. The cruise line tried to get everyone to buy their excursion tours, and told us it would cost $27 to get a taxi ride into town. Well, we are cheap and found that they offered taxi rides for $5 and we were on our way. Well, the taxi broke down and we had to flag another.

After playing in the beautiful white sand for a while, it began to downpour.

We were directed to a snorkeling boat by a girl from a smoothie stand. Her cousin Captain Tony, took us out to the reef for about 1 1/2 hours, then to a place where we could dive for sand dollars and star fish. We even tried virgin Bahama Mammas...yum!

 Even on a gloomy day, this was probably our favorite day of the whole trip. The world below was unbelievable!

 Thank you Sand Dollar!

Key West and West Palm Beach

Day 4

What to do on a Sunday when you are on vacation? Take a 4 hour drive through the Florida Keys. It was a long drive, but cool to go over so many bridges and be surrounded by water.

We found that we started out too late when all of the snorkeling tours were gone by one o'clock. We stopped at one place in Key Largo that had a parrot sitting on the fence. Val tried to get it to sit on his arm and it bit him. Key West was beautiful, but I saw a little more than I wanted to. Stopped at a fabulous shell shop that we could have spent hours in, but only had minutes before it closed.

Day 5 
We made our way to West Palm Beach where we boarded our ship and partook of its goodness. That is until everyone was too tired to play with me because they wore motion sickness patches.

We played some "Friendly Feud" and won. Someone on the ship had a medical emergency and we had to return back to port. This gave us a few minutes to try and locate Val's lost phone... with no luck :(

Alligator Alley and Jungle Queen

 Day 3 started off with a time share presentation that went on and on...
Afterward, we headed for a swamp boat tour, missed the turn and ended up here.

 The guys heard that fan boats don't go very fast. Well, we found Dee who was willing to take us out two at a time in his fishing boat.

  Pretty amazing to see these creatures up close. Dee told us that he recently had a 14 ft. gator crawl into the back of his boat, and had to chop at it with his machete.

 Another stop off at the beach before boarding the Jungle Queen River Boat.

 The Jungle Queen is a tour boat that took us through the waterways of Ft. Lauderdale. We got to see a lot of mansions and yachts. Then, you get off on some island where there is an all you can eat dinner. The most scrumptious dinner of our trip! Some locals we there for about their 20th time and taught Val how to shell fresh shrimp. Idaho Boy was in heaven! After the meal there was a short show that was quite hilarious.

 Nice relaxing evening. I couldn't believe how warm it was even at night. I recommend this dinner cruise.