Home at last!!

Don't get me wrong, we completely enjoyed our vacation. But, after being gone for 9.5 days (we left on Thursday night), it's nice to be home!! I guess I should start from the beginning, huh? On Thursday the 20th, we headed down to south Florida. We left that evening and drove through the night. It took almost 15 hours for what used to be a 12 hour drive! Of course, that was back before we had kids and we drove a car that got 30+ mpg and Adam only stopped for gas! Now, we have an SUV that gets about 18-20 mpg on the highway and kids who need bathroom breaks. LOL And, don't forget, a baby who has to be fed! Fortunately, his nursings coincided with planned stops all but once round trip! And, the boys didn't really cause us to stop either, except maybe once. But, there's a difference between stopping to gas up and stopping to gas up, let 5 people have bathroom breaks, nurse the baby and change a diaper!! Anyway, we got down there last Friday and really enjoyed ourselves for a week. There was no schedule to follow and we just did what we wanted. We got to spend lots of time with Gigi and the boys had a blast being on her turf. We haven't been down there in 5 years, so they really didn't remember what it was like last time we visited. Besides, where else do they get to swim in March???? The pool was still cool, but they swam anyway. We also went to Lion Country Safari and enjoyed watching all the animals. Gigi took us to several fun and interesting restaurants and we just relaxed. That was the main point of the trip anyway. Unfortunately, though, we did have to come home. We left early yesterday afternoon after sleeping in and a late brunch with Gigi. We stopped in Georgia last night after spending about 90 minutes in construction delays and only went 9 or 10 miles in that 90 minutes! About 7 hours of driving, construction delays and rainstorms today and we finally got home. It's nice to get away, but it's even nicer to get back home!! I won't share all the pics right now, but thought I'd post a few of the boys' first swimming excursion this year (it won't happen again for a couple more months!).

Horsing around (I just love that splash!):

Coming up for air:

Michael swimming "underwater":

Jumping right in:

Of course, Anthony is a little too young for the pool yet. Had it been warmer, I would have put him in. But, it was too cool for me so it was way too cool for him. But, his first trip to the pool consisted of napping and then lying in mommy's lap: