Alligators in the Everglades

So we are going back about two months now. Buying a house has been taking up pretty much all of my extra time and brain power which has left this space pretty sparse. Since this blog is pretty much my excuse for not writing in my journal, I am taking the time to go back and actually record things that have happened in the past couple months. It's all about that guilt relief folks.

I wrote about the first part of our mid-winter trip to Florida back here and this is the second part of that little vacation. We spent the last two nights with our friends, the Beans, in Ft. Lauderdale. We watched as the Seahawks dramatically lost the Superbowl and ate lots of amazing food thanks to Whitney and Kirk. (pictures way at the bottom of this post)

The following day we went on the most awesome airboat tour in the everglades. I was completely amazed at how flat it was and how many alligators we saw just feet from our little boat. It was nuts.

This was one of the airboats we rode on. You can see how shallow the boat is. There is absolutely nothing between you and those creatures. If you look closely in some of the pictures below you can see how fast we were zooming along the water, sawgrass whipping by left and right!

B really was excited to be there although her expression says otherwise

After zipping over the water for a couple of minutes we found the first alligator.

We scooted around to another part of the glade and saw another two lurking just beneath the water. The boat captain said they normally see one, maybe two on each trip but we were pretty lucky to see 5 in all.

Two at once!

This particular airboat company also runs an animal sanctuary for injured reptiles and other native animals. We got to go see a variety of scaly things which wasn't my very favorite part of the day. Reptiles freak me out a little bit.

There were baby alligators that you could hold but I was not going to do that! Are you kidding me?! Thomas held the little guy and I touched it with one finger. That was more than enough. I felt very brave.

That night we pulled out a few games- we always play games with the Bean's. I don't recall what we were playing but it was probably the hardest I have laughed in a long, long time.

I love this picture of Thomas trying to keep it together.

And as promised a few pictures of the Super Bowl treats we had- Blueberry Mojito's, Fruit, Football strawberries, pulled chicken, Chili's queso dip, fresh pico de gallo and of course Skittles in honor of Marchon Lynch.

I have to say that I love this little tradition we have of going to Florida in the middle of the winter. It's just too snowy and cold here to stay sane for 6 months without seeing the sun at least a little bit. A huge thanks to the Whitney and Kirk and their little girls for letting us crash at their house!