Elizabeth and I spent 4 days in Florida and it was amazing! The best part was getting to spend good quality time with friends. And the younger child of each of the friends we went to visit is within a few months of Elizabeth in age, which was lots of fun (and made the logistics easier). Also, sun.
Before we could get to the sun, however, we had to get out of snowy New England. Luckily the snow slowed down enough for us to get to the airport, but we then had a flight delay. But there were snowplows to watch, so it wasn't a complete loss.
And Elizabeth got to spend 45 minutes running around the airport, burning off energy and entertaining all of the other travellers.
We spent the weekend with one of my college friends and her family and did all sorts of fun animal-related activities. On Saturday we went to a manatee viewing center, a spot near an electric plant where the manatees apparently come because the water is so warm. It was cool to see them in the wild (or sort-of wild), but there wasn't actually much to see, especially for the kids. For the most part all you could see were a bunch of lumps in the water (their backs). You could sometime see their noses come up, but the view was much better at the zoo the next day.
On Sunday we went to the zoo, which is of course one of Elizabeth's favorite places. That girl and animals!
And the girls had a lot of fun together. And I think Vita and I had even more fun watching them together.
Then Sunday evening we moved over to see Clair and the family and I was shocked that Lizzie seemed to remember them. To me it seems like only weeks since they moved but it has been about 1/3 of her life since Elizabeth saw them. But she went right to Clair and jumped into playing with the kids with no hesitation.
It got even warmer in those last two days so we spent a lot of time outside. Clair's kids had school/daycare during the day so we spent the mornings taking Lizzie outside to explore (and taking lots of pictures of it), the afternoons working, the early evenings letting the kids play together, and then girl time after the kids went to bed.
Elizabeth's reaction to the beach typifies how different she is from Nicholas. It took Nicholas 3 or 4 years to get to the point of being excited about going in the water instead of scared of the waves. Elizabeth was very unsure of the sand at first
but was very excited by the water and fearless. Only a couple months ago she was hardly walking and now she is literally running into the waves and I had to chase her down the beach. This girl is pure spunk.
Also, the birds:
Clair took those awesome beach pictures.
She also took some other good ones while we were there.
Elizabeth looks so different here. Her hair looks redder with the good camera and the humidity made it much curlier than it is in MA.
So many good memories with friends!
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