Meet Tex

Time to introduce our new kitten... Tex. He is a ball of energy, and a bottomless pit for food. That guy can eat, honestly it's just impressive.

Unfortunately, he is also beginning to discover his claws... and teeth. Not cool. However, when you look past the injuries he dishes out, he is a great loving kitten that can't get enough attention. Here are a few pictures from a few weeks back...

-Grant

Fishing... Again

Alright, it looks like we have a lot of catching up to do. We have totally been slacking in the blog posting area, and for that we apologize. Turns out, when we arent having to work all the time we get to leave the apartment a bit more and the computer stuff hits the back burner. It's kinda nice actually...

I will try to put up a few new posts here shortly to catch up for whats been going on. To begin, lets take a look at our newest adventure: fishing (not from the shore this time).

We made the decision to not purchase a small boat since our time here is limited. To counter balance that, we went ahead and bought ourselves some small pontoon floats. We considered kayaks, but having previously owned them back in Texas, we knew that storage would be an issue. After some research, we decided to go with these inflatable pontoons.

After a weekend on the water we are overall pleased with their performance. They are no boat, and heck, they aren't even as fast as kayaks; but they get the job done. In fact, they are considerable more stable than our last kayaks which makes you able to stay out on the water longer (with even more beverages of your choice).

Although we didn't exactly slam them, I did catch one flounder. Also, we both got to see a manatee come up for air. They are kinda ugly...

-Grant

Clearwater Offshore Races

Over this past weekend I made my way out to Clearwater Beach to watch some offshore boat races while Dana was hard at work. While they were pretty far off the beach it was still real entertaining to watch. The boats were impressively fast, and equally as entertaining, very loud. Here are a few good action shots-

There were a number of helicopters following the action from above, which in themselves were entertaining to watch. The photos below show the number of people that turned out to watch the action. Considering this isn't the busiest beach time of year there were a ton of people that showed up. You can also see the mass number of boats anchored offshore watching- they were solid on the horizon- I'm pretty sure everyone with a boat in the area showed up.

-Grant

The East Coast

Last weekend we finally began to explore the rest of the state of Florida- beginning with Miami. We didn't reserve anything ahead of time, which worked out great for us as we got a great deal just off the beach in an old hotel that was built back in 1939. We spent Saturday walking around South Beach, enjoying the clear water, and getting our fill of Cuban food.

This is the hotel we stayed inn- (get it?)

The view of the beach from our room-

The entire area kept is original architecture, which made all the street scenes very uniqe and colorful.

So far, this is the best Florida beach we have seen yet. The water was clear and clean, the waves were larger than in the gulf, and the characters on the beach really kept us entertained.

Saturday night after dinner we sat outside our hotel enjoying some mixed drinks and desserts.

Sunday morning we spent a little while out on the beach before check-out time, then headed into Miami to see the Bayside Marketplace, which my Dad worked on back during construction. He tells me I saw it back when I was 9 months, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't changes a bit.

Following another great Cuban meal, we headed on back to St. Pete via Alligator Alley. Not much to see on this drive...

-Grant

Mom's Visit & Dana's Birthday

Last weekend my Mom (this is Grant typing) came to visit us from San Antonio. We had a great weekend showing her around our corner of Florida, visiting the beaches, restaurants, and of course our gator friend as introduced in the last post. Mom flew out Monday, but before she left we spent the morning kitten shopping for Dana's birthday while she was hard at work at the VA.

We started the trip with a run back up to John Chestnut Park, which we had pictures from in the last post. We wanted to show my Mom an alligator, and luckily one was there ready for us. He actually hung around longer than last time, and we even got to see him swim away.






A few other critters/plants in the park...





The next day we spent some time down at the beach in Sarasota, then made our way back up to St. Pete for dinner. We ate at Crabby Bills and were able to watch another great sunset on the beach.



On Monday, Mom and I went kitten shopping while Dana was at work. We were able to find a cute little gray one that has been a lot of fun (except for the constant meowing...) Happy Birthday!

-Grant