Miami!

On our last day with my family, we drove to Melbourne (where we were originally planning on moving in a year or so! haha) for John to pick us up. We had breakfast with my family & said our goodbyes. It was really hard for me. I was excited to spend time in Miami with Anna & John but I wasn't ready to leave my family just yet. It didn't matter, I had to.

We had about a 3 hour drive to Miami so this gave us plenty of time to catch up & talk about what we would do over the next few days. Once we got there I wasn't really sad about leaving my family anymore. We spent our first day there at South Beach. It was fun but it was crowded. Years ago it probably would have been my favorite of the beaches we went to.

We saw a cruise ship departing while we were there.

On the second day we went to a beach that wasn't South Beach. I have no idea where it was, but it was my favorite beach we went to.


A Man O' War. They sting. It hurts. But it didn't sting me :-) I knew it was safe to touch the top because of Finding Nemo, of course! I also have a picture of me picking it up, but it's a horrible picture of me. I refuse to post it.

On our third day we drove down to Key Largo where we rented a boat. It was super windy and a bit chilly but we had a ton of fun still. There was a small craft advisory because of the winds. We were supposed to stay pretty close because of that. We stopped at one area of the reef & the water was SUPER choppy & cloudy. We couldn't see a thing! Because of this we decided to ignore the rules & go out a little more. I'm so glad we did. The second place was WAY better. I don't have any of my own pictures from this day because I lost my awesome underwater camera. So...I decided to steal some from Anna :-)

Snorkel gear is so sexy.

Barracuda. Josh's favorite. I'm kidding...he hated them. We saw several.

The next day we just stayed around the house to hang out during the day. We slept in, played cornhole & just had a good time catching up. We went out for dinner that night. We found an Irish restaurant named John Martin's. haha. The food was SO good! I got a fisherman's pie. It's like a shepherd's pie but with seafood instead of beef. SO good! A few pics borrowed from Anna :-)

Our last full day was spent at another beach. I was excited because this one had a lighthouse! The Martins took this one while we were walking toward the lighthouse. I like it :-)

One of my favorite pictures I took during the trip.

From the top of the lighthouse. You can see downtown Miami in the background.

The lighthouse was beautiful but the beach itself was a little dirty :-/ This day it was way too cold to get in so we just played a bunch of Bocce.

He's so cute! I've never seen a raccoon on the beach. He tried to steal food from the boys.

We saw lots of sailboats...we decided it was a sailing class.

We spent the rest of the night catching up & playing games. I love hanging out with the Martins. They're our best friends & every time we visit everything just falls into place. It doesn't feel like it's been forever since we've seen each other. This time I guess it really wasn't, we saw each other over New Years. This time it will be longer. We'll probably get to visit with them in October. We decided that we'll try to visit each other once a year. Then we'll at least get to visit twice a year plus Christmas :-)