Exploring

Our friends were down in the lower keys on vacation and we got to go visit over the weekend.  Happy happy!  It was so much fun to spend time with them.  We talked, and laughed, and ate (lots :), puttered around in the kayaks, and stayed up way past bedtime.

The only pictures we got were from the moving car on our way down.  The highway out over the ocean was a unique drive and the water was beautiful.  We will definitely go back and explore some more!  Hopefully with kayaks in tow. 

We came home from the keys, slept, washed up, packed up, and the kids and I left again on an impromptu venture with our homeschool group.  They had, by chance, come across a university run program that offers a book based everglades camp to school aged kids.  And it was free to boot because of a grant.  Another group had canceled and they needed to fill spots up quickly, so off we went.
 

We bunked in barrack style 'cabins' with about 40 beds per building; miraculously nobody in ours snored!  What are the odds?  We ate smores, fished, canoed around the lake, and the kids got to try their hand at archery.  We learned a little about the local wildlife and a young boy who was one of Florida's first pioneer settlers.  It was more than a little chaotic and scheduled to the minute-- literally, bathroom breaks were on the agenda.  And, while we had a lot of fun and the people running the program did a great job of keeping it running, I was glad to be packed up and heading home once it was over.  I can add 'communal camp limit = <24 hours' to my list of things I learned this week. :}

Tomorrow we are back to plan 'A' standard days- school, wandering somewhere, unpacking boxes.  The weather has been cooler, windy, and overcast for the better part of the past couple of weeks.  Glad to have the warm and sunshine back!