Florida Days 5-7 or "Tampa Bay, Here We Come"

Jonathan and his feathered friend.

All-group ice cream break, an absolute necessity.

We met up with my sister's family who arrived on Sunday and will get high 80s all week. Which really isn't fair at all.

View from our hotel room. Oooh, aaaahhhhh.

Armando was riding in style.

Brady managed to jump into about 3/4 of the photos I took. It was his week's mission. It wasn't annoying at all. Really.

*****

On Monday, the Batista family (my sis) joined us! We hit Busch Gardens for 2 days and spent some time at the pool. Unfortunately, the weather never really cooperated to do the beach thing again, as it actually got down to the 40s at night.

Please stop laughing. No, really. I can hear you. You have an evil laugh. It wasn't all that funny.

Busch Gardens was a blast and especially fun with so many of us. I rode the Sheikra again because, apparently, I have some sort of death wish or masochistic streak. All the way up to the 800-floor drop (slight exaggeration) I close my eyes and mutter things like, "This is stupid. Why am I doing this? This is stupid. Why am I doing this?" with a few "ohmygod"s in along with a few choice expletives while my brother cackles at my discomfort next to me. I did, obviously, survive, but I had to go lay down in the bougainvillae for a while afterward. Brady went on it a dozen times, eventually working his way up to the front row the crazy nut. This from a kid who only two years ago, wouldn't do scary rides at our county fair. My how far he's come.

And now we fly back to IL where a snowstorm is due in the next few days.

I can still hear you laughing. And it's really starting to irk me.

We say bye-bye to palm trees (not native), white sand (trucked in), and excellent seafood (over-fished waters) until next time and head back to the land of turtlenecks and pasty, white skin and seafood that tastes like mush.

Ah well.

Life is good.