Tampa

Warm weather and sunshine! We have been enjoying a spectacular vacation that is unfortunately coming to an end. I am not ready to go back to 40 degrees, but we all miss home and the pup. Archer has been looking at pictures of Ender constantly, and declared that he never wants to take a vacation without her again. Sweet boy! I promised him lots of camping trips with Ender which seemed to satisfy him. 

Anyway, we started out our vacation a little south of Tampa where my aunt & uncle are staying. We spent a few days with them, playing at the beach and hunting for shark teeth. We also went to a state park where we took an air boat ride and saw LOTS of alligators (and some cool birds, but of course the boys only cared about the alligators!). It was the perfect vacation kick-off. 

Airport with Arch (and his "kitty baby")

Zonked out kids 

Beach!

The shark teeth. Preston especially loved hunting for shark teeth. He was very determined and found A LOT of these teeth. 

John, Preston, Archer, Teddy, Uncle Al, and Bryton watching some basketball

Gators!

Blue Heron

And more gators!

Archer's binoculars that he pulled out many times on our trip

Teddy trying to leave with us!

After a few days exploring the area, playing with Teddy (the awesome poodle!) and most likely driving my aunt & uncle a little crazy (although they did seem to tolerate our craziness fairly well!), we headed back up north to Tampa to the cruise terminal.

As with last years' cruise, I picked this cruise for the itinerary. We aren't ones to care too much for ship amenities at this point, although I'm sure that may change as the kids get older. We are perfectly content to sit out on the deck reading, take the kids for a swim, and let the kids play in the kid's club. But, we did dock next to the Norwegian Epic, and the boys were marveling at the water slides!