florida 2015

wow. it’s been a long time since i last blogged. i’ll catch you up on all the events of the past year and a half in a separate post. today though i’d like to share our adventures on a little two-week trip we just took to florida.

we drove down to visit family in the villages—yes, we now have family living in florida!! score! if you haven’t heard of the villages, you really need to check it out. go ahead and google it. i’ll wait.

we drove down on a saturday pretty much in time to get in the bed. sunday morning, tripper and i got up and drove a little farther to st. petersburg (tripper was speaking at a conference and i tagged along). y’all—we left the boys! they were in good hands with papa ger’, mamalin, and pompa. and for the first time in seven years, tripper and i had a little weekend recharge.

while we were alone, tripper had a fantastic idea to drive even farther—down to miami—but we needed to pick up the boys for what he had planned. so we headed back to the villages, spent a few days having fun with family and then loaded up the car and drove south.

what was in miami?? well, here’s a clue.

still no idea? here’s another hint. the thing in the blue bag just ate a live chicken.

if you happened to guess snakes, go ahead and pat yourself on the back. you are looking at not one, not two, but three burmese pythons plucked from the wild and safely secured in nothing but 200 thread-count pillow cases. #yikes!

yes. we drove all the way to miami for snakes. you see, alex has developed an infatuation with snakes. he knows everything there is to know and hopes to one day become a herpetologist. um, goody? his favorite tv show is a series called swamp wars. it’s about the miami/dade fire rescue’s venom one response team—a group of very brave souls whose job it is to hunt down deadly snakes in south florida. so we headed down in hopes of laying eyes on them.

we got to meet captain jeff fobb from the show and also got to spend two hours (!!) learning all about the fire rescue team. it was fascinating and so very nice of them all to take us in and show us around.

behind the boys you can see the pharmacy of antivenin ^^^. they had a collection for pretty much every venomous creature you could think of. the boys liked the cobra antivenin the best. naturally.

^^^ that’s the snake that was in the middle bag from above. captain fobb had caught it that morning. my apologies for the shaky picture—i’ve never been that close to a huge musking (read: STINKY) constrictor before and was a little jittery! all four of us touched that snake. omg. for alex.

alex had about a million questions and we all learned a ton. captain fobb was so patient and kind and pretty much showed us everything there was to see. in the next picture captain fobb is explaining a tendon in the snake’s jaw that allows it to spread it’s mouth wide enough to eat an entire chicken.

it’s kind of pretty, right? the snake, not the tendon.

we also got to hold a ball python that lives at the station (he’s used for training). and when i say we, i mean tripper. tripper was the only one brave enough to hold him.

while we were there, we also got to meet the helicopter pilots and the emts that jump out of the choppers into the ocean to save people. amazing.

and finally, the boys got to check out the venom one response truck. happy boys! even max, who is way more into soccer than snakes, loved it!

and that was our trip to miami!

kidding!!

we also spent some time at the beach …

… caught up with a dear old friend who got to meet the boys for the first time. this is eric …

… and swam like little fish at the insanely beautiful pool at the national hotel …

then we drove the four (really six) hours back to the villages for another week of snakeless fun. though we did see a slug.

#sluglife