Vacation to the Keys

Hey y'all! So yesterday was my first day in the new part of my strenght training class and oh boy am I feeling it! I have been out of the gym four over two weeks between vacation and coming down with Pneumonia. I can barely lift my hands over my head so I figured what a perfect time to finally catch up the AMAZING vacation we just got back from. It's also an excuse not to do the four loads of laundry I have. (why is it never ending?)

Anyways.... I think we were gone for a total of eleven days. Five of those were spent driving. Now I don't wanna brag or anything, but my kids are total rockstars when it comes to traveling. The drive was about seventeen hours without any traffic. Im pretty sure they only asked the "are we there yet" question like ten times.Seriously though they were so fantastic which is great cause it was just me and them doing this crazy drive and I wouldn't have been able to do it if it wasn't for our awesome friends who let us stay with them. We love y'all!!

When we finally made it to Marathon Key I don't think we were there for more than ten minutes before the girls ran upstairs and changed into their bathing suits and begged to go to the beach. (I don't blame them it is still practically winter in VA)

Our first full day we went to visit our friends work and hangout with all her cool friends. You guys her friends are dolphins! She works at the Dolphin Research Center and it was the coolest experience. All the dolphins were out in salt water pods and we could've sat there and just watched them swim around and play all day long. The girls got to hangout with a dolphin named Pax. They got to paint tee shirts and play with him and he would bring them a ring to throw for him so he could bring it back. They also got to give him hand signals to make him jump out of the water like the trainers do. I think this is something they will never forget.



You guys I'm totally writing this two weeks later. oops! Sometimes we just get SO busy and I forget that I need to take some time to just sit here and relax and finish things that I was doing. (Like laundry lol) And I'm going to apologize right now for the layout of the pictures. I have no idea how to get them side by side. I try to do the HTML coding and sometimes I can get it to work and sometimes I can't and it really just upsets me.

Monday, Tuesday,Thursday and Friday we spent all day at the beach and the pool.The girls are getting to that age that they can just hang out and I can relax. Let me tell you it is so nice!! The first beach we went to was called coco plum beach. I still to this day can't get over how beautiful and blue that water was! For the first two hours we had the entire beach to ourselves and the water was so calm. There were lots of trees around for the girls to explore in and they loved finding the biggest rocks they could to make a little sand fort with. The rest of the week we went to Sombrero beach.This beach was more of a tourist beach, but we would get there early and get the best spot to set up. I think this was the girls favorite spot to be. They had swings and on one day we were there the water is so flat that they didn't get out for three hours!

Wednesday was our only day we didn't spend outside. We were all so red and we just really needed a day out of the sun. I took the girls to check out Aquarium Encounters. This place was awesome! We got to feed turtles and sting rays. They had all kinds of touch tanks that the girls could go and explore. Their favorites were the sting rays and starfish. I had never even seen a starfish before so I thought that was pretty neat. The girls really wanted to feed the sharks, but I thought the little animals were enough lol.

Saturday was by far my absolute favorite day! A few weeks before we left for Marathon I was on pinterest and I saw something called The Dry Tortugas. The second I saw it I texted my friend and told her that we had to got there! Its one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.We had to wake up at 5:30 am and drive down to Key West to catch the ferry to get to the island. It took us about two and a half hours to get there. We would get to the island around ten am and leave around three pm. Lillian and I got a little sea sick, so we couldn't wait to get off the boat but once we got there we were in love. We spent most of our time snorkeling and the girls got to come out deep with us and see all the fish and wildlife. Ive never seen them have so much fun before. It was such a wonderful last day and it wore them out, which was fantastic because we had a nine hour drive back home the next day.I can't thank everyone enough who made this trip possible! It is one we will never forget!

                     Thanks for reading this mess of a blog.
                                                   ~ Michelle