Showing Denae the Florida wildlife

There is a park about 10 miles west of our condo, which is where the city ends and the everglades start, we wanted to take Denae out to to show here some alligators. We had been there last year and we saw about 5 of them in 10 minutes so we assumed it would be easy to find a few. We got out there and walked around for an hour and could find none. It was overcast and windy, about 75 outside and I concluded the alligators must like the sunshine since they are reptiles, and are in hiding waiting for the sun so I just started taking pictures of some of the other wildlife.

Native bird (I think)

Native butterfly

Native boat

another native butterfly

Parrots on a fence

parrots on the ground

The edge of the everglades

After spending most of the afternoon walking around we decided to head to the beach. As we were driving back to civilization there is a canal along side the road. I decided to pull over and check the canal and lo and behold...a gator!

Native alligator

He is awake

about 6 feet

Denae loves animals

After a few pictures we went down to the beach. Not a lot of people down there late in the afternoon, but there were a bunch of surfers.

Not a busy beach

except for these guys

Girls on the beach

boulders on the beach

So it was off to lighthouse park. It was getting close to sundown and the fishing boats were coming in.

here comes the boats

We ran across the street to the Pompano fishing fleet docks and watched the guys unload the fish.

Fresh fish anyone?

Probably going to be a McDonald's fish fillet

Until nex time....hasta lavista (Spanish for later)

Boat parade (for real this time)

Sunday was boat parade day. Well Sunday night would be, and we were sure this time. We decided to hit a few garage sales in the morning. We found nothing we wanted except for a artificial tree. We bought it and brought it home. It was quite a bit taller than our old one. It is about 6 feet tall and our old one was 3 feet tall..

Our old Christmas tree

Our new and improved Christmas tree

We just lounged around until 6, then headed down to the water to watch the parade. We immediately noticed a fairly large crowd as we pulled into the park. We found our area we wanted to sit and opened our chairs and sat down.

Looking at Bonnie, you would think it was cold out

This was the temp, Her blood is thinning out from lack of real coldness

Here come the boats...

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum

Where is the rest of the parade?

there they are!

Just kidding.....
It was about an hour and a half until we could see the lights of the boats coming. The crowd murmured with anticipation....here are some pics and some videos.

slow down buster!

Deck the deck with ball of holly

that is a real airplane on that boat

Monday was laundry day....You know the grind....

Tuesday was picking up Denae (Bonnies daughter) day from the airport. She is staying until after Christmas while I am up in Iowa visiting the family.
I took this video as she came off the plane.

Gotta go...

I gotta get off my A$$

I have been very lackadaisical on my postings and I will attempt to correct this. I Think being retired is getting me tired.

We decorated our tree.

Oh Tantembaum

I have taken and posted many pictures of the blimp, which is housed just down the road from our place.

The Blimp!

They had a USMC toys for tot's drive over at the hanger this morning, and I couldn't resist the opportunity, so we zipped over there to see the inside of the hanger.

Blimp in a hanger

Bonnie and the blimp (and Santa)

Bonnie and a couple of US Marines (Thank god for our service men!)

After the blimp stop, we ran down to the beach to have some lunch.

The beach cafe...

what a view!!!!

After lunch we stopped by the Swap Shop (a huge flea market)
and the had some cars on display. One of them was the testerosa that was used on the TV show Miami Vice.

Sweet ride

I think from cars....

Then tonight we pulled a Griswold move. (It must run in the family)
We went down tot the inter coastal around 6:30 to watch the Christmas boat parade. We went last year and wanted to get a good parking place. We got there and there was only one other car there. We were pumped, as we figured we would get a good spot to set up our chairs. The other people there were speaking a different language so we set up our camp site and waited.

Wasting time waiting...I call it Moon over Miami

Bridge over wrong night waters

an hour and a half later, one of the people from the only other party there came over and asked in broken English, "is there boat parade?"
I quickly responded "it will start pretty soon". A half hour later a lady drove up to walk her dog and she walked by us and Bonnie asked if the boat parade was coming by tonight. She said....It is tomorrow night. I laughed all the way home. What a dork.
On the way home we saw the city was having its Christmas tree lighting ceremony so we stopped and got a picture...

Christmas tree in the tropics

Oh, by the way, speaking of the Grizwolds, we got an inflatable kayak....This should make for some interesting future blogging headlines.....

This should be fun.......

Doing a lot of nothing on Thanksgiving

We didn't know what to do for Thanksgiving...So we went to the Hard Rock casino down in Hollywood. Its about a 20 minute drive down there and we had never been there before. We were planning on spending the day down there.

The shopping area as you go into the casino

30 minutes and 75 bucks later we were back on the road. Where to go, and what to do? We pondered the questions for a few and settled on the beach. It was a great day out...85 degrees and sunny!

Nice day at the beach...

We hung out down there just walking and looking at the people.
As it got dark we went to look for somewhere that may serve turkey. That is not as easy as it sounds. We also may have underestimated how many places would be closed or close early for T-Day. We went to several places and were in serious jeopardy of striking out. The situation was becoming critical!! We gave up on Thanksgiving diner as we were becoming quite hungry and decided to just eat something. We went over to a restaurant called Watercolors. It is a bar / restaurant in a hotel on the inter coastal.
We sat at the bar as the restaurant is exposed to the elements and it was quite windy out that night. As we sat at the bar, looking over the menu, the bartender overheard Bonnie saying she wished we could have found turkey. She said, much to our delight, we had it for a special today, and I think we still have some left. We will take it we piped in simultaneously! She got our drinks and left us to celebrate our good fortune.  As we were sitting there, the people next to us started talking to us. They had been drinking (A lot) and we quickly became their best Friends. They are from Maine and invited us to come out anytime!!

Steve and Betsy from Maine

Our food came and it was a pleasant surprise! A regular Thanksgiving day meal. It was good, but paled in comparison to my mothers Thanksgiving day diner!

it ain't mom's...but it will have to do

After saying our goodbyes to Steve and Betsy we went home. We should have stayed there, but decided to run out to Walmart.
Bad decision. It was the evening of blackfriday, and we did not realize Walmarts black Friday started Thursday night at 10pm.
We looked around at some of the specials and ended up getting me a new phone. It is an android powered phone from Straight Talk.

The Walmart nightmare

I love it!! It is basically a hand held computer that also makes phone calls! It has a voice search for google. I say something and it will do a web search. It has a GPS that I can voice activate. Really cool.

In aa world that won't...droid does

Saturday morning we went to a bunch of garage sales. We got a few treasures to put on e-bay and some for us to keep.

The loot

And Sunday (today) we did laundry, and sat out by the pool getting our dose of radiation. That's all from Florida...

chillin

Snowbirds are flying!

I meant to post earlier, however, my laptop was having some problems. I suppose it had something to do with getting submerged in water.  I was driving up to my parents house in Sioux City to check on my father, who had just gotten done with his gall bladder surgery. It had snowed the night before I left to make the drive. I got up early to head out and threw my gear (Including my Laptop) into the trunk. Apparently the snow on the trunk lid slid into the trunk without my knowledge or approval and melted on my drive. I got to my parents house and went to retrieve my laptop bag out of the trunk, when I noticed it was very wet. Alarmed I went inside and to my horror, I pulled my laptop out and it actually had water dripping out of it. At first attempt after drying it out for a couple of days...It powered up but had serious display issues. Unbelievably after a couple of weeks of thorough drying time...It works great again!

So let me go back to Colorado........

The prison I escaped from...I mean the store I was running out in Colorado

Well the snow fell and we flew. We were happy to get out of Colorado, even though it is beautiful. We left Sunday morning (the 6th of Nov) after 2 months of hard labor.

It was cold in the mountains as this video shows...

The drive was 12 hours across Nebraska. You all know how exciting this can be. I was never so happy to see Omaha!
I missed my little grand kids Halloween trick or treating, and that sucks because they look so cute! I got a picture text of them and they looked adorable!

Ely, Andrew and Allysa...The loves of my life (at least 3 of them)

We were only home for about 5 days and they were hectic as Bonnie was quite anxious to get to the condo! We hustled to finish up the winterization of the cabin and by Friday the 11th of November we were off! We drove to Kansas City and spent the night at our son in law Michael's house. Bonnie had never seen it.
We picked up a Mannequin he had gotten for me. It is for our e-bay sales career.

My mannequin

See how effective it is

Saturday morning we got up and headed to Springfield to say good buy to Bonnie's family. Her son Tim and his wife Tanya live down there. We spent the evening eating pizza and visiting. The next morning we drove down to Branson (an hour south) to see Bonnie's granddaughter Kaylee. We went out to lunch with her and her boyfriend. It was nice to see her so happy.

Kay and Grandma

Getting ready to hit the road

I found the titanic. It's not sunk. It's in Branson Mo

We left that afternoon and made it to Little Rock, Arkansas. We grabbed a motel and got ourselves a good nights sleep. The next morning we got up early and committed to making this a long day of driving. We made it all the way to the Florida panhandle, where exhausted but happy to see the beginning of the palm trees, we grabbed a motel and crashed.

Bonnie is very happy to see the sun!

Cars loaded...Lets go!

The next morning we left the motel at 8 am and were at our condo by 5pm. It was 550 miles from the panhandle to south Florida where we live. We were relieved to unlock the door and see it just as we had left it! (Although Bonnie spent the next couple of days cleaning up the dust?) I almost forgot to mention, Upon waking the first morning, I went outside and my car would not start! I called triple A and they came and could not get it started so the towed it to a garage. The garage called and said it was the timing belt! Yikes! A few days later they called and it was 1000 bucks! That sucked!

My POS

Anyways, once  the cleaning was done we headed down to the lighthouse park and then the beach. We were to pale skinned from the Colorado trip to hang out on the beach, so we just walked a bit.
The ocean is a very calming place to hang out. The repetitiveness of the waves and the noises of the birds, mixed with the winds is natures perfect symphony! Welcome back to Florida! Although the downside is the hole in my heart from not getting to spend time with my family :(

At the park. What does she have in her hand?

Oh I see...a coco nut

We did some garage sales and thrift store looking and I found this shirt! Pretty cool don't you think?

Live long and prosper! Beam me up Scotti!

Bonnie had been commenting on my hair so I headed down to the old cost efficient hair places and got the ears lowered.

Looking good!

Looking even better. (as if that's possible)

Then a couple of nights ago, we were hungry so we decided to go out to Peter Pans for diner. My big sister Debbie used to work there when she lived down here, and we remembered her taking us there when we visited her. It must have been 20 years ago or so and we wanted to commemorate her by eating there.

Remember this deb?

Bonnie is studying the menu.

Deb, isn't this where the drug deals went down?

Today we did go to the beach to hang out and I took a few pics of things passing by the beach. i was going to take some pics of the actual beach, but I may have beaten a dead horse last year.

Sailing

A pirate ship chasing the first guy

heavy traffic on the high seas

It is now the eve before thanksgiving and I am very sad not to get to spend the holiday with my loved ones. They are all gathered at grandma's house and partaking in some good old family time and my mothers great cooking. A shout out to them all...Love you guys!! and have a great time! I am out.