Chug-along-chica!

Today we went to church in Fort Lauderdale Florida.  The people were so nice and friendly!  They must be used to having visitors.  Also, fully half of the congregation was late for church, which was just interesting.

We took the kids beach combing and we gathered a big ol' pile of shells.  They were absolutely everywhere!  Even the sand was made of small pieces of shells that had been worn smooth and it sparkled beautifully.

I went to run on the treadmill, but the gym had closed already.  I didn't want to run in the parking lot again!

4 miles on the treadmill in a resort gym in Florida.  It was boring except for the lively dudes who kept yelling out how many bench presses they had done, followed by excessive manly sounds of triumph. Those guys were yelling the whole time I was there and I was really glad to leave.

I think this was the day that we went to the science museum. This was one of my favorite things on the trip. We got to see lots of live animals on display in the everglade exhibit. My absolute favorite was the AMAZING frog exhibit. So many frogs! The little venomous ones from the rainforest were the most adorable. There was a little luminescent one that is so venomous that even if it just touches you, it would be quite dangerous. The exhibit said that it was more venomous than any snake or spider on earth. Imagine that! There were also these little dime-sized ones that were SOOOO cute.

Now try to tell me that that's not cute! What you can't tell is how tiny he is. He would fit on my fingertip.

2 miles, unshod.  I wanted to have a nice barefoot run in Florida.  Unfortunately, there weren't sidewalks for most of this run, and though I enjoyed the temp and the scenery I ended up with horrible blisters on my feet that made it quite painful to walk for a day or two.  Dang!  I think it would have been okay if I didn't have to keep getting my feet wet.  Every time a car passed me I jumped off the road into the lush grass on the side of the road, which was invariably soaked.   Having dry feet is imperative for preventing blisters!

We spent most of this day in the resort pool, which had water slides and other fun stuff for the kids.  My 3 year-old was brave enough to do the water slide!  I was impressed.   The thing I enjoyed most was watching the daddies from our group play water volleyball with 4-5 year-olds in their arms.  Every time the big beach ball they were using went over the net, the dad would lift the kid high and the kid would hit the ball.  The kids felt like a million bucks getting to play in an important capacity like that, and the dads all got a major upper-body workout.  It was adorable. 

I missed a couple of days of running here, but my feet needed to heal a bit anyway.  What I really enjoyed during these days was swimming in the ocean.  I liked to swim out past where I could touch the ground and just float like a piece of kelp, and enjoy the slight feeling of danger, since I'm not that great of a swimmer.   There were little tiny fish that swan around and tickled your toes.  They added some fun.  Something stung me though--probably a jellyfish?  It wasn't a bad sting.  I only felt it for 20 min. or so.  Just glad it was me and not one of my kids.

I didn't run today but I did walk around almost continuously for, count 'em, EIGHT hours.  The girls all went shopping today at this HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE mall.  My mother-in-law is a shopper!  I never thought a 60 year-old lady could walk that far, that fast, for that long.  I most ly tagged along, but I got some really fun stuff too.  All the chicas were sore the next day.

4 miles early in the morning in Florida.  It was hard for me to run early in the morning while we were there because of the time difference.  6:00 felt like 3:00 am!  Anyway, I finally did it and got really lost and found my way home again within 4 miles.  Thank goodness for Garmins!  Only slightly disappointed to not see an alligator (he he).  We spent most of the rest of the day packing and traveling home.  We also saw that  kids' movie ,  "Wall-E."  I liked it!  It was really different from all the other Pixar movies.  Nice ending, I thought.