Our Florida Trip

We flew to Brooksville Florida on Dec 19-26th to visit my parents over Christmas. We had a blast in the warm weather, saw manatees, alligators, flamingos, went to Sea World and a mermaid theme park. Took a boat ride, picked oranges, lemons and limes, went golfing and much more. The boys did pretty well on the airplane, but Pat and I did have a touch of the flu during our trip. Spending Christmas here was awesome. Here is Pat and Gabe and Chance at Homosassis Wildlife Park and flamingo's in the background. Warm weather was awesome. St. Petersburg is where we flew into and it was absolutely beautiful, gulf of mexico, palm trees.

Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad enjoying the beach, it's nice to be able to visit them over the holidays. This is Pine Bend beach on Christmas Eve.

Check out these mermaids

Pat and Gabriel at Wiki Watchee theme park in Brooksville Florida. We also went to Sea World to see Shamu the next day. 79 degrees the first few days, beautiful. Pat liked the mermaid show here at wiki watchee. I prefer this mermaid. ha ha

Beach on Xmas Eve

Does it get better than being on the beach on Christmas Eve? Gabe went swimming, the boys played, we saw a few hermit crabs and mom and dad packed a picnic for us. Loads of fun. Didn't notice the "no swimming alligator sighted" sign on the other side of the beach until we left, but oh well, we had a blast.

Beach Bums

Pat thought this would be fun, bury Gabe.

Chance

Chance was a little scared of the sand at first, but then loved the beach and of course shovel and bucket.

Yikes an Alligator

Notice the alligator in the background. Gabe wouldn't take his eyes off this one long enough for a picture. We went to a famous mermaid show our first day in Florida, and a 9 foot alligator swam up the crystal river last year to surprise the mermaids in the theme park.

The Manatees

My favorite part of the trip was watching the manatees in one of the largest refuges in the country. There were 70 wild manatees in the day we visited. We got really close to them and the park rangers also fed them carrots. Amazing animals. Chance got a toy manatee to take home.

Golfing on Christmas Day

As we are golfing on Christmas Day, we were picking oranges off the trees and eating them. Gabe really liked golfing.