Mosquito March

March, quite possibly my favorite month of the year!!  Although I will say for the past 6 years I have had a particular fondness for the spring vegetation that always shows up sometime in March.  Not this year.  South Florida is pretty much summer all the time.  Of course when it is snowing everywhere else that's not a bad thing.  I know you are sick of hearing me complain about Florida, but not as sick as I am of LIVING IT!!  Sigh, at least my birthday is at the end of the month!  YEAH!

Last month, as you may recall, we took the kids to see an outdoor viewing of the symphony (wallcast). Another wallcast was in the works for the first weekend, but at the last minute we stumbled upon another "cultural" event of an entirely different kind.  There was a free concert in the park with the Charlie Daniels Band in Weston which is like 15 minutes from our house versus the 40 minutes we would have to drive to check out the symphony (again).  Guess which one we picked!! 

  

 

For a few weeks we had been listening to "Devil went down to Georgia" on the Ipod, so there really wasn't much of a choice from the kids' perspective.  I am not really sure how the kids got into the "Devil went down to Georgia" kick, but whenever the computer has been on and unsupervised recently, we often heard the "devil up on that hickory stump" verse.  So we were off to see Charlie Daniels! We got to the park early enough to get a pretty good seat and to have a bite to eat before the opening band started up.  Charlie came out about 9:00 and did a full 2 hour set.  The cool thing is the kids learned a new favorite song, "The Legend of the Wooly Swamp," but after 2 hours it was time to go!  Lucy was falling asleep standing up and Ben wasn't much better, and we still hadn't heard the big song.  So we decided to pack it in, much to Jim's chagrin.  Of course that is when they started playing the ONLY song everyone wanted to hear.  So we got our second wind and sang the entire song and more importantly, the children recovered enough energy to walk themselves back to the car!

Another thing I mentioned last month was FINALLY getting the girls into a Brownie troop.  Their first event was a "Decades" dance.  Their troop picked the 1980's.  Thank goodness Neon is back in style so I was able to find some pretty bright ensembles.  Parents weren't allowed to attend so I have no idea what they actually did at this dance, but they sure looked the part!
 

Trouble, so much trouble you are looking at right here.

One of the cool things about living down here is that there are some world class events that we can expose drag the children to.  One such event was the Doral Open.  Now golf isn't my favorite sport and I wasn't exactly sure how this was going to play out with the kids but fortunately for us we had tickets to a tented event and the kids could see the action at the first green and more importantly sample SEVERAL different kinds of ice cream.  

Kids photo bombing Phil Mickelson

Shh, Tiger is putting the ball

We walked around following Tiger for a few holes and then the ice cream high wore off and it was time to go.

Nanny's visit was next up on the agenda!! We managed to keep her pretty busy without really doing anything out of the ordinary.  Jim was FULL of suggestions of museums and art shows but she wasn't really interested in any of that.  I did get her down to see the Holocaust Memorial in Miami.  It is a pretty powerful piece of art coupled with extremely graphic material.  Definitely a somber outing.  

My attempt to get her on a swamp boat ride failed.  Next time Nanny, next time!  The rest of her week was filled with just keeping up with the children.  We gave her a pretty good indoctrination of our week.  Gymnastics, Piano, Homework, Book fair and lucky for her Science Night!  The school hosts a night where the family members can visit the school and be exposed to some of the science topics the children have been learning about.  Lucky for her one of the "Alligator experience" exhibits brought a few live animals.  

One finger touch counts as a touch!!

No sooner had Nanny left then it was time for the dreaded leprechaun to show up.  Man, I really do not like that guy!  He wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so messy!!  Not only does he leave little shamrocks all over the place, he destroys the living/dinning room EVERY TIME!  Sigh. I know this is a self-inflicted wound, but of course the kids love it!  Jim tells me we are the only people he knows who are visited by the actual leprechaun.  

Finally spring break arrived!!  Jim's brother John, his wife Bree, and their girls Josephine and Kemble were in Palm Beach for a few days and we drove over and meet up with them and some of their friends.  They were staying in The Breakers which was AWESOME, and we got a last minute room at the airport Courtyard.  The difference in our accommodations did not go unnoticed by the children.  Ha Ha Ha.

Lobby of The Breakers

We stashed the children in the kid's club and John and Bree arranged for a babysitter to watch them until we returned from a FABULOUS dinner out in town.  When we returned we found all the kids in the same bed.  Too funny!  I am not sure how any of them fell asleep all jammed in there together but they did look pretty cozy. 

We extracted the kids, drove to our hotel and crashed.  The next morning we drove back over for a wonderful buffet breakfast.  Thanks so much to John and Bree for a great visit! 

After leaving the Breakers we piled back into our car to start phase two of our break - camping.  OK, just to recap: we left a 5 Star hotel brunch and drove to a campground.  In the Everglades.  In late March.  During Spring Break.  I am not sure if any of you can relate to this or not, but that is a serious downgrade.  On the way to the Flamingo campground in Everglades National Park which is situated WAY WAY OUT IN THE BOONIES at the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, I was reading the reviews of this place on Yelp.  The more I read, the less I wanted to go.  For the most part all the reviews were positive with an ominous thread of warnings about the mosquitoes.  Upon arriving at the entrance to the park there was a scrolling message board and one of the messages was advertising the mosquito threat level.  Jim was relieved to see that it was moderate.  Me, being the ever skeptic, wondered out loud what was the scale and so Jim asked the attendant and his reply was at least it was not "extreme" as he quickly shut his window after giving us our change and waved us through.  EXTREME!  Oh well thank goodness for small miracles.  We found a site, pitched our new deluxe tent and proceeded to apply copious amounts of bug spray while the kids scoured around looking for sticks to start a fire.  

So far so good.  The first night was fairly uneventful and there was a nice breeze so we weren't too hot.  Also Jim and the kids saw an amazing astronomy presentation at an outdoor amphitheater -- with no cultural lighting in Flamingo, the night sky is spectacular!  Unfortunately, this is what greeted us the following morning.

Those tiny black dots are mosquitoes!  Lots and lots of mosquitoes between the mesh top of our tent and the rain cover.  I started pressing up and smashing them between the two but I am not sure if it made a dent in the population.  Jim was trying to reassure us that dawn and dusk were the worst times for mosquitoes and soon enough they would be gone.  Needless to say, no one was eager to go outside the tent.  Jim gutted it out and made bacon and eggs over the fire while continuously spraying himself with bug spray, and he served us breakfast inside the tent!  Best bacon and eggs we've had an awhile!  Luckily, by the time we were ready to go on a boat tour the blood suckers had retreated to rest up for the dusk attack.

The boat tour of Florida Bay was really nice.  Basically it was us, the guides and about 6 or 7 Japanese tourists who apparently were on a mission to photographically record the entire trip.  I would hate to have to watch that slide show presentation!  We saw several egrets, osprey, herons, cranes and vultures and were even lucky enough to spot a small pod of dolphin feeding and corralling food.  They put on quite a show!

Upon our return, Jim decided he and Ben were going to go kayaking and try to catch a fish.  The girls and I were going to go up for a turtle talk but somehow missed it and retreated to the tent for an afternoon of stick gathering and reading.  Have I mentioned that we are so far out in the boonies that there is no cell phone service?  Well there wasn't.  Jim's super secret work phone had service but I think that thing would have service on the moon!

Success!!  Look at that Red Drum!

Jim and Ben had a hugely successful fishing trip, and caught a red drum that Jim insists was "towing the kayak."  The redfish is a nice one, but I'm not sure it's that big.  Ben was thrilled.  Almost as much as Jim. 

At some point during the day the campground filled up with what I am assuming to be college students on Spring Break.  Apparently they are broke college students because who goes camping in the Everglades for Spring Break!  These guys, that is who.  Very Loud, well into the night wee hours of the morning.  So that was fun.  Also our inflatable mattress sprang a leak and slowly deflated all night -- awesome.  Thankfully the next morning it was time to head home.  We quickly broke camp and made a bee line to an awesome Produce stand called "Robert is Here" near the entrance to the Everglades.  They have all kinds of fruit and vegetables that we had never heard of, like "jack fruit" that is bigger than a football.  The biggest draw for the kids are a petting zoo in the back and an elaborate honey bar in side, with free samples of about a hundred flavors of honey (like coffee honey, jalopeno honey, mango honey, chocolate honey, etc.).  These sounded like flavors from Harry Potter's "every flavour" beans.  I was looking for the dirt flavored honey, but they were out.  Seriously this place is amazing, almost worth the 45-minute drive from Miami.  It doesn't hurt that they also sell amazing fruit smoothies!  Alas, no smoothies for us on this day -- we were heading to Cracker Barrel for brunch!  Easily the best meal we have ever had there. 

 The kids still had a whole 7 days left of their spring break, what in the world are we going to do now?  Jim's answer for 1/2 a day was to take them fishing on an air boat in where else, the everglades!  Unfortunately it was a rainy morning but no one minded getting wet a bit.  Lots of fish, and lots of smiles.   I went to the gym.  No more Everglades for me for a while Thank you.

Jim had to go back to work so the kids and I were on our own for the next couple of days.  Not a problem, this is south Florida, let's go to the pool.  We were experiencing a bit of a cold snap (temps topping out in the upper 70's) and this is what greeted us at the pool.  Seriously?  A hoodie!  Come on dude it is NOT COLD!

Finally it is my birthday!!  In typical Jim fashion, he went overboard!  The children served me breakfast in bed.  Actually I went for an early morning run and they slept in so it was more like breakfast after I took a shower and on the couch, but let's not split hairs.  

First class wait service on my birthday!

I made the mistake of making a breakfast sandwich out of my eggs and bacon and had several requests from the children for one "just like it" so I was up before I knew it and back in the kitchen making more scrambled eggs and toast!

The kids each got me a flower and we went outside to plant them in pots.  My big present from Jim was tickets to the Sony Open Tennis Tournament later that night!  I was soooo excited!!!  I had really wanted to go to the US Open last year while we were in RI, but it just didn't work out so when we heard about this tournament which apparently would be the "5th major" if they ever cared to add another, I said we would be crazy not to go.  We got to see a quarter final match between Nadal and some guy who I had never heard of.  It was AWESOME!!!  Nadal won of course and we were able to stay to watch a women's semi final match between the world second-ranked woman who would lose to Serena (Li Na) in the finals and a young Slovakian we had never heard of.  We didn't stay to see the end of that match, but it was still all good!  BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER!!