Florida

As many of you know Travis and I just got back from a three day weekend trip to visit his Aunt and Uncle, Leticia and Mark, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Pembroke Pines is located right in the middle of Fort Lauderdale and Miami. His Uncle Mark is his mother's brother and his wife Leticia is a Major in the US Army. They are some of the nicest people you will ever meet and they have five of the greatest kids, Alex, 18 and on a full ride scholarship in North Carolina for swimming and academics, Cynthia, 13, Johnny, 9, Rose, 7 and Sarah, 6.

For rpice reasons we had the red eye flight, left at 1am on Thursday/Friday morning and got in at 6:45am Eastern time. LONGGGGGGGGGGG flight let me tell you. Luckily for $5 Trav and I shared a TV and tried to get some sleep on the completely full flight. When we got in his aunt arrived to pick us up and immediately we were greeted with hugs, happy conversation and it never ended the entire weekend. Leticia for those that don't know is actually from Mexico. To me she is a shining example of what hard work, dedication and perseverance can do for someone. She came to the US through a work Visa without knowing any English and with no education. She now has two Bachelors degrees, a Masters and is working towards her Doctorate, and I believe most are in the field of engineering. She has been to Kuwait, Iraq, speaks three languages and still finds time to be an amazing mom and connected very closely to her family.

Back to our trip. Friday was pretty fun. After we dropped off our gear, Leticia cooked us a great breakfast we headed out with her to Miami as she had to participate in the closing ceremonies of a conference she had been in charge of. From there we decided to take a tour down to an area called Homestead to an Air Force reserve base so we could see it, but also because she needed to get some short sleeve uniforms. The commisary (grocery store) on base is supposedly 30% cheaper than going to safeway or albertson's and we got three shopping carts full of food, supposedly a week, maybe two worht of food for her family, wow!!!

The rest of the day was sent playing in the pool, both at their home and in the amaznig community recreation center. By the time 9pm rolled around we were exhausted. we spent the evening relaxing, eating dinner, and then sleeping very very hard. Saturday we took a boat tour of Biscayne Bay, which there are some huge homes down in Miami. We saw South Beach, downtown Miami, the ghetto of Miami, we got lost, and the HUGE crusie ships. Now I am itching to go on a cruise. :) For dinner we went to their favorite restaurant which Leticia says is the best Mexican food she has found since moving to Florida, and it was great! We then spent some family time watching Enchanted and again early to bed.

Sunday was great, we spent the entire day at the Fort Lauderdale Beach. I got a great tan, Travis was the kids jungle gym and poor guy got a bit fried and salt water burn from being rubbed raw from lots ofpiggy back rides and shoulder rides. :) All in all, the trip was great. We have some great stories that I don't want to put up here, but honestly I can not wait to spend more time with them.

No on Sunday I have to take Trav to the airport again as he is headed off to California for three weeks for work :(

Here are pictures from our trip.