A Real Vacation

 Miami was great! Vacation is mostly fun, but there are always things that make it hard because life is hard. So it was real. Really real.

We took a red-eye Friday night which was as much fun as it sounds and landed in Fort Lauderdale at 7am. We picked up our rental car and headed out to the everglades for an airboat tour which was really fun.

When we walked up to buy tickets there was a guy holding a baby alligator and petting its tummy. The alligator was obviously loving it. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen! Ivy got to hold the baby alligator too.

They had some bigger alligators as well at this place and we also saw some out in nature on our airboat tour (and just driving around you see them in canals - it's nuts!!)

 Then we checked in early to our Airbnb and slept because we were so tired! Our nighttime walk in Miami was really memorable. Will freaked out about bridges that can go vertical. The thought had never even crossed his head! 

On Sunday (which was Bill's birthday) we drove out the the Keys. We bought some masks on Key Largo and then found a place to use them and swim - Harry Harris park. 

Then we decided we would drive all the way down to the southernmost point of the US, Key West. It was long, but a fun drive.

The kids have better pictures. There is a marker that shows the 90 miles to Cuba, but there was line of people waiting to take pictures with it, so we just did a drive-by and Will took a selfie of the marker out the window. I settled for the longitude and latitude in our car.

On the way back we stopped for dinner and had alligator bites (they tasted like chicken fingers) and Bill got some birthday key lime pie, which he shared with us :)

Monday Bill and Will had their big skydiving adventure. We drove to Clewiston where they both jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. Hopefully we'll have more pictures coming of that because my pictures were mostly terrible.

Ivy and I waited and watched.

Then there was more sleeping because we were all just so tired!!

On Tuesday we did a fun thing for me. We walked the two miles to Little Havana and window shopped and had lunch - a real Cuban sandwich. It was mostly just fun for me and everyone was as patient as they could be. But all the colors of Little Havana were so much fun!!

Bill and I agreed that the movies capture the feel of Miami really well. Lots of tall glass buildings, fun colors, beach and fancy cars.

This place is how we knew we were there.

The murals were my favorite part of Little Havana.

Wednesday our flight wasn't supposed to leave until 10pm (it ended up leaving at 2:15 am the next day, but that's another story!) so we had plenty of time to kill.

We went to Miami Beach.

Changed our clothes in the car :)

And watched a movie in Fort Lauderdale (I thought about Wyatt the whole time and wished with my whole heart we just find him and give him a hug!)

We did our best to reset alarms to watch Faith report news each day. Some days it worked and others it didn't. We missed her and wished she could have been with us! It's a pain having her so grown up sometimes. I'm so grateful that I can stream 2 News Live from almost anywhere!