Balancing Work & Play... in 80-Degree Sunshine!

After arriving at our hotel in Ft Lauderdale... the fun was over and the work began. I was a little stressed because I was busy preparing for my first trade show and I just wanted everything to go perfectly. And for the most part, it did!


Where I spent my week...

 

Where Christopher spent his week...

I know. Totally not fair, right?! I got to join him for a few hours at the pool, but most of the time I was busy answering emails, phone calls and making sure I had all the bases covered. I loved having Christopher with me... but at the same time it was hard because I felt like I was ignoring him...OK, I was totally ignoring him. But he knew that he got to come along on one condition, work comes first. So he understood and was okay with enjoying in the sun, testing out his snorkel gear and hanging out in the hotel room watching National Geographic. 

He did get to come with me to our company dinner party though, held at the rental house of a crazy hunter! This guy had pictures of all the animals he shot: elephants, rhinos, cheetahs, lions, alligators, bears, monkeys... it was awesome. And of course, Christopher was mega jealous. That's his life dream. So we got a cool picture of his foot inside of an elephant's foot! And it was totally real. I felt the hair and the toe nails. A little gross, but still cool. 

After the trade show was over on Friday and everything was packed up, shipped out and cleaned up... I got the weekend to PLAY! I was so happy and relieved that everything went well. It was a great feeling. We spent some time in Ft Lauderdale on the beach and swam out to the reef off Commercial Boulevard. We'd never been snorkeling on our own before. As we were about to go out, a kid walked up to us and asked to come with us. We said sure, and quickly became friends. His name was Kelly and he lived in the area, so he taught us a lot about the fish, snorkeling and even offered to take us scuba diving the next day!  

The next morning, the weather was windy and there were some choppy waves... but we decided to go anyway. It was a little tough for us to equalize our ears and unfortunately, my right ear never did. But it was still fun to explore and see all the cute little fish in the reef. 

Christopher even saw a puffer fish!! But he didn't know it til after. Too bad. He may have tried to poke him to make him puff out ;)

On the way back to the beach, we swam right through a school of Pompano fish!! It was SO cool! While they were swimming they would randomly swim sideways and flash their metallic fins.

This whole "swimming far out into the ocean" was a new thing for me. I'm normally really scared...mostly of sharks and jelly fish. But since I had goggles and could actually see what was in the water around me, I wasn't so scared any more. I think it's the dark unknown that's most freaky. Especially since I have a very vivid imagination and watch too much TV.  But we made it back to the beach safely and hiked down the beach to our towels. Here's a photo of Chris and Kelly... new best friends! They both played college football and love hunting, fishing and now... scuba diving!

It was such a great afternoon. We are so lucky to have met such a cool friend! Crazy how life and timing just happen to work out. After our snorkel/scuba adventures we headed down to South Beach, Miami for the evening. The bright blue water was beautiful!!

We drove around Miami for awhile, checking out the city. There were neon lights everywhere and big buildings lining the water. It was a cool city and we definitely want to go back another time to explore more. Then we continued on down to Key Largo. Neither of us had ever been this far south in the U.S. before. It wasn't quite how I pictured it (I was thinking more like big Bahama beaches) but it was still really beautiful. We went on a boat ride out to the Pennekamp State Park where they have a big, colorful reef...perfect for snorkeling!

 

I'm not going to lie... this wasn't the best snorkeling ever, in fact it was pretty disappointing. The wildlife was really extensive, but the water was SO choppy we had to fight the waves and clear salt water out of our snorkels the whole time. Since it was pretty cloudy, the water was a little dark so our pictures didn't turn out that great. But we did get to see a lot. I loved the pretty blue fish and we also saw a bunch of big barracudas! Scary... but exciting :) We were hoping to see some sharks, sea turtles and sting rays but weren't lucky enough this time. Overall, we were still glad we went but it made us even more excited to go again another time when the weather is better. And we want to perfect our scuba skills too.

After getting some DQ, we made it back to our hotel, The Sunset Cove Beach Resort, just in time to see this beautiful orange sun setting over the water. That's one cool thing about Key Largo. You get sunrises AND sunsets!

Then we spent our last vacation day relaxing at the resort...

Eating frog legs, catfish and gator bites...

Holding Jaws the baby gator...

And relaxing in the sands of the beach one last time before heading back to cold Ohio...

Our 20-hour journey home actually went by really fast. We even got to see and hear the Daytona500 along the way! It's crazy how loud the race track is, even from the street outside. And you can smell the rubber tires burning too!

We loved our little weekend getaway and enjoyed exploring a new place, WARM weather, and spending some quality time together. Florida gets 5 stars in my book!!