Florida

I am back from a week long trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Sarah wanted to go to a scrapbook convention for a long time. When she saw this one earlier this year she knew it would be perfect. Her oldest son, Mason, has grandparents there. Due to some strange flight availability we got in 3 days before our convention and stayed 2 days after. It allowed us to be tourists.

We took the red eye Monday night getting in Tuesday morning around 11am. We headed to sawgrass mall. It was HUGE. After walking the entire thing from one end to the other and back we were done. Then we headed to Hollywood beach. It was incredible. The water was warm and clear.

Wednesday was my favorite day. We went on an Everglade Air Boat tour to see the alligators. It was awesome.

On the right are the boats we went in. It started as a beautiful morning.

We saw an owl, vultures, butterflies, lily pads, spanish moss and cattails.

Then it started raining. Not just a little sprinkle but full on - someone turned on the faucet- type of rain. I was on the edge of the boat and the rain was coming in. I tried scooting to the middle but then rain was coming in through the seams in the boat. I was WET. I didn't care though. It was warm and I was busy taking pictures of the alligator!

See how close it got to the boat? I could have reached over and touched it.

After we were thouroughly soaked and had gotten all the pictures our cameras could hold. (I took over 50 just of the gator) We went and tried gator. It was good!
We had fun being tourists. We each got a shirt with a gator that says Bite Me. The boys each got hats. Fun day!

For dinner we went to the Rustic Inn, a local place known for its crab. We had a sampler plate with more gator. This was better than the first. It was moist and tender. I also tried a frogs leg. It was ok. Like they say it tasted like chicken.

Thursday our classes started at CKC (Creating Keepsakes Convention).

We completed a 6x6 album in one evening.

Over the next two days we took 13 classes and 2 evening crops. We made an altered clipboard, 2 acrylic albums, a calendar, mini album, paper bag book, lots of layouts and a few more albums! It was great. We had such a good time getting rejuvinated and back into the scrapbook mode.

Our favorite teachers were Megan Hoeppner of Simple Scrapbooks

and Emily of Creating Keepsakes.

These are just some silly pictures of us. We kept passing a building that said Mental Ward (turns out is a bar that is closed down). We had to stop and pose like escape lunatics!

I'm an Athlete

I signed up with a local running group this week. I told them I don't run, I walk. They said no problem. They tricked me. My first workout on Saturday the coach has me walking 1 minute, jogging 30 seconds. I kept that up for 1 mile. I walked/jogged over 3 miles.

Today I took the family out. We walked to a local park and I did laps while the kids played. I was able to get in 2 1/2 more miles. Yeah!

The best part is the GPS wrist unit Aaron got me. He says it is an early birthday present. It is great. It calculates my mileage, pace, laps, calories burned and when I get home I download the information it has stored and it makes a chart. This is so helpful.

My goals are to complete my next half marathon in under 4 hours. I plan to do the Cow Town Marathon in October, Big Sur half Marathon in November and take part in my first Marathon Relay the CIM in December.