Florida

We made it to Florida despite Fay. We got everyone up bright and early on Wednesday morning and on the plane by 6:35am. Max was pretty excited during take off and yelled, "Bye ground. We're going to Florida!" which made all the people sitting around us laugh. Mia curled up on me and fell asleep within minutes of take off and slept almost the whole way there. Landing was rough because of the wind coming from Fay, but we made it.

It was windy and rainy and stayed that way until Saturday morning. Everyone was at work or school except for Grandma, Pa and two little dogs that Max absolutely hated. He was pretty sure he had been tricked, but then everyone came home and he had cousins to play with.

One of the times we were able to make it outside we took a walk around my old neighborhood to see all of the changes. One of those changes is the fact that the Florida Sandhill Crane, of which there are only 4-6000 left, has decided that it likes it in Lake Wales. These birds are large, very loud and very curious about people. They just march into peoples' yards and act like they own the place. They make a kind of strange prehistoric sound and Max gave them a leery eye.

My baby girl turned one year old on Sunday and we celebrated her birthday on Friday night. As you can see by the pictures, cake was alright by her.



Max was spoiled absolutely rotten on this trip. He got to eat almost every meal in front of the TV and people gave him ice cream every time my back was turned!

He was exhausted every night from playing with his new hero, cousin Jena. Those two are like two peas in a pod and he absolutely adored her. Notice the umbrella that he found and had to take everywhere, including to bed. I had a rule that it couldn't actually go INTO the bed, but could stay next to him. He is a strange little guy at times.

The trip back was not pleasant. Max did not want to leave Florida and cried off and on to the airport, cried all the way to the plane, cried all the way to Columbus and then got really hysterical when we couldn't land due to weather and had to divert to Pittsburgh before we ran out of fuel. He didn't know why we couldn't get off the plane and was wailing like you couldn't believe. It didn't help that it was way past dinner and he was exhausted. He sobbed and wailed all the way back to Columbus and finally stopped the second the plane parked itself, after something like 3.5 hours of crying. Mia slept most of the way, woke up, petted and cuddled Max trying to calm him down, gave up and went back to sleep. She's an amazing traveler!