Florida Trip Part I

Well, it's almost a month later and I'm finally getting around to blogging our Florida trip. We went to Sarasota on fall break in October. It was SO much fun! We stayed in a house that belongs to a friend of Brent's family. I don't know about you, but my own family doesn't have any friends who own multimillion dollar houses on the beach. I'm just lucky to have married into this well connected family!! This house is these people's winter home. We LOVED it! There was more than enough room for us, Brent's parents and Matt and Brenda to all have our own suites. We weren't exactly tripping over each other in this place. Above, you see a picture of the front of it. Don't we look tiny?

The back of the house complete with pool, spa and fountains. This place was amazing. We visited once before during Thanksgiving of the first year we were married, but it was a completely new experience to come when we could actually use the pool, beach and other amenities.

We really had a lot of fun. We went mini golfing one night and took Maura with us. She had great fun running after all the balls and picking them up. It was perhaps the quickest 18 holes of mini golf I've ever played. We had to keep moving to keep her happy that night. She did like feeding the live gators they had at the course, though.


Matt and Brenda. This trip was kind of like their honeymoon, since they didn't really take one after their wedding. What a cute couple!

Living life in the lap of luxury. We really just hung out around the pool and beach all day for the whole week. You really don't need to go anywhere or do anything else when you're surrounded by total luxury.

Maura and Brent enjoying the spa--don't worry, it wasn't hot. Maura loved the bubbles, though, and kept throwing her toys to watch them disappear in the jets.

Maura with Poppa. She loved the lions and spent a good portion of her time outside perched on the back of one of these statues. They had four lions total. It was so funny. Every day this big tourist party boat would come by and they'd be talking about how big the house was and everything. Kind of made you feel a little weird to be seen outside while all the tourists stared at you.

Chuck and Matt having a kayak race. I'm not sure, but I think Matt's plan here was to capsize Chuck and then take the lead. Regardless, it was a very physical race.

Matt and Sherran having a much more sedate kayak ride. We really enjoyed the kayaks and also the dock. Every morning about eight manatee would gather around the dock to hang out and eat. They were so fun to watch. There were even two babies with the group. They'd usually be there for an hour or so, then move on. We also saw dolphins from our dock. Three dolphins came swimming by one day and played out in the water about 30 feet from our dock. They were jumping out of the water and everything. It felt like Sea World!


Maura at the beach. Her new favorite beach activity is picking up ever rock, shell and cigarette butt she could find and tossing it into the surf. Big fun!

Here's a group sand castle effort. It really did take this many people to build, because Maura knocked it down just about as fast as you built it. With three people, you could kind of stay ahead of her!

What a cute little beach bum. She really enjoys the beach and we went there just about every morning of our trip before it got too hot.

Brent threw her up in the air until he was completely exhausted! She still couldn't get enough of it. She kept saying, "AGAIN!"

Feeding the gulls. Yes, we broke the cardinal rule of beach etiquette and fed the gulls, but as you might notice from the beach behind us, it was nearly deserted out there. Maura loved the sea gulls and would run at them just to see them fly. Feeding them was just an excuse to get them close enough for a real chase.

Anyway, as you can see, we had any awesome time. I'll post the Disney pictures soon. Maura was in heaven there!