Category: family

Well, our week in South Florida is officially over. I am currently sitting in the airport in Ft. Lauderdale waiting for our flight. The kids have got their long pants on, we have jackets in hand and we’ll be back in our beds tonight.

An amazing vacation. We, as a family, needed this. It’s good to be 100% connected with the kids. They are even sitting with me alone on the plane to give Kristen a little break.
With reality just moments away… I can honestly say it’s been an unforgetable trip, and we are ready to get back to our lives in Romeo.

I realize I forgot to update yesterday. There goes my streak of perfect blogging!

Yesterday we had a great time at the Swamp Safari. The kids got to see a lot of gators and I was pretty giddy about going on an airboat ride. We spent the rest of the day at the pool. A good day had by all.

We’re off right now to some beach in Miami, then hopefully some time in Little Havana. Time for Kristen to get her Cuban cigar.

So the majority of our day was spent going to and enjoying Key Largo, FL. We took the kids on a glass bottom boat and then ate at a great place called "The Fish House."

Highlights for the glass bottom boat tour were the dolphins on the way out and the sea turtle… though I am the only one who saw that. Overall, it was very pretty. Glad we did that.

The dinner was incredible. Kristen had shrimp and I had some crazy lobster/shrimp thing. We bought the kids key lime pie and they wouldn’t touch it… so Kristen and I will not be eating for at least a week now.

Tommorow, it’s off to the swamp to see alligators and a florida panther.

So we did the timeshare presentation thing today. Yuck, yuck, and double yuck. How many ways do I have to say "no?" Now I know why I like 3Story evangelism vs. "selling Jesus." This guy tried so hard to sell us a timeshare and the more I said no, the more he tried harder. At least we did get a nice gift out of it.

Another good day here in South Florida. Not much on the docket except a trip to Cold Stone (Paul fell asleep and I’ll be taking him as soon as he wakes up.) We did go to church at Calvary Chapel Sawgrass and also spent most of our day in the pool. OK, so my white skin is starting to feel that!

Church was OK. Very different service from Romeo. They had a full rock band that only did 2 songs and then the pastor preached for about 80 minutes! Yuck.

I am finding special and guiltless pleasure in tiring my kids out here. Today we spent the first few hours in the pool. Apparently this was tiring because Paul took a nap and Megan and Kristen lounged around while I took a nap. After naptime, we headed to Hollywood for some quality beach time. (Much more family friendly than Ft. Lauderdale) Afterwards we headed south on A1A, saw some major ritzy cribs and a few too many Trump developments before heading back to Weston for dinner. We munched at a very packed Carolina Ale House while watching a little bit of the Final Four.

About 10 minutes before halftime Megan crashed in Kristen’s lap. Paul somehow made it back to the hotel, but quickly fell asleep. This reminds me a lot of my time as a camp counselor when we spent a lot of energy the first 36 hours tiring our campers out. Just like in that case, we know we’ve got Megan and Paul right where we want them. They’ll sleep well tonight!

We’re off to Calvary Chapel Sawgrass for church in the morning. That should be a good time.

I’ve almost completed reading of my first vacation book, Five People You Meet in Heaven. More on that later.

It hit me sometime today between the Butterfly World and our hotel. We all needed this vacation. I have been going so hard and so fast that I thought it was just me that needed to do this. Nope, it was all of us. We all need this serious quality and quantity time together. Man, the kids giggles have been great.

As you can see, I’m having a great time in Florida. (Though this guy isn’t coming home with me.) You can see all kinds of pictures from our first 48 hours on vacation in my family photos to the left.

To most, this vacation is a tiny little thing. But to us
McLane’s, it’s huge. A combination of going somewhere we’ve never been before
with oodles of special time with my kids… it is a big deal to me. The first
hours have been great.

We got to

Ft.

Lauderdale

,
rented a car and headed into town to fulfill our task of the day. Job #1 was
eat some seafood and go to the beach. With that as our top priority, we went
right to it. Of course the minor detail of not having a place to stay was beside
the point… but we did go out to eat right away and then made our way to the
beach.

After lunch at a place called Quarterbackers (or something
like that) we found the downtown parking area and waddled our white skins over
to the

Atlantic Ocean

. Paul had never been to the ocean,
only Megan. So this was quite an adventure for our almost 3 year old!

We waded and splashed around for about an hour when I
decided it was high time we secured a place to stay. Halfway between the beach
and the inter-coastal waterway we saw a place that had “Vacancy” on the front.
We went in, looked at a room and decided we could survive a night there. In
retrospect the “Wish You Were Here Inn” was a mistake. We should have shopped
around! Great location, bad room… is it OK if I call the place a dump? If I
were to give it a AAA rating it would be one half of a star. Honestly, it’s
terrible! I have to take some pictures just to document how bad it is or no one
will believe me. The only upside is its location. Our room back up to the
inter-coastal waterway and we can watch boats go by as well as enjoy the little
patio area. Nothing quite like typing this with warm air on my face and the
slaps of water against the hauls of yachts.

It was our second trip to the beach and we had been there
for a long time when Kristen remarked to me… “There sure are a lot of guys in Speedos
here.” For about 10-15 minutes I was starting to wonder about that new craze of
Speedos in our great country. But as we were walking back to our room Paul and
I walked through a very large group of “shiny muscle men.” That’s when the old
Gaydar went off! Thing must be rusty. Next up, Paul and I had to wait for 2
guys to finish helping one another shower the sand off their bodies before we
could get the sand washed off of our feet. We sure live in a changing world!