YAY for Younger Brothers!

Really... don't you just love them? Well, I do, love mine. He's the best and he just came to visit for five days. It was  fantastic. A little run down of our time spent...
First stop... the beach, because when you've come from 30 degree weather with tons of snow to 80 degree weather with sand  five miles down the road, why not hit up the beach  first things first?

Owen had a blast with his uncle playing in the waves. Derek also had a little time to just lay in the sun and relax.
Derek took a red eye out here to Florida and only slept for maybe an hour or so on his way over, so the second thing on the list of must do's for this guy was a nice little nap, or nice big nap, three and a half hours to be exact. Doesn't he look comfy?

That night we took the bikes for a spin, got some frozen yogurt (mmmm... yummy) and hung out by the water.

On the agenda for Thursday was canoeing through the mangroves over at one of our local parks.

Not on the agenda, running into almost every tree along the way. Derek really knew what  he was doing with those paddles because he earned  his canoeing merit badge once a long time ago. I on the other hand have not ever earned any sort of thing and mostly just laughed when I would make us go the wrong way with my paddle.  Oops...

Unfortunately, it rained for a good part of the day but that just made it a prime opportunity to hit up the outlets and do a little shopping and hang together. Oh, we also took him to one of our favorite restaurants here in  Fo Lo... Anthony's. I promise you it's the best pizza I've ever had. Amazing.

So it looks like Derek is hating this but I promise he loved it too

We also hit up Shark Valley because what would a trip to South Florida be without checking out some gators? Friday we decided to bike around the everglades for a few hours.  It was a complete success. We lost track of how many Alligators we saw while we were out. Such a good time.

Friday night it was time to teach Derek a little something about making sushi. He was a natural. Seriously, his first sushi roll was perfect. Good work little brother!

Saturday Derek and Tyler was super manly and worked on the boat while Owen and I headed to the grocery store.  Once they were finished we went over to our local St. Patrick's Day Festival to find us a little luck of the Irish. Have I mentioned that I love St. Patricks Day? I do... and I love all celebrations for that holiday. Just a few things found while at the festivities:

Handsome Men



Owen's favorite part

Loved this little calf. He kept sitting in front of him, waving and saying hi. Cute.

A guy on stilts who was super awkward holding little boys like Owen

Had us some traditional Irish food. Tyler opted for some corned beef and
cabbage while I felt more like fish n' chips.

Derek decided on a more traditional American meal.
Pizza and funnel cake. Yumm

And a new friend for Owen.

Unfortunately, even though Tyler and Derek spent most of the morning working on the boat, it needed more fixing so we had to change our nightly plans. We still wanted to take Derek out on the water though so we decided that the water taxi would have to do. And it did...

We checked out nice yachts, huge houses and Ft. Lauderdale beach at night. While there we ate some yummy frozen bananas and ice cream. We also found out we may have a little environmentalist on our hands.

The last day he was here we decided we had to check out South Beach, because you know it's touristy and all that stuff and when you find yourself in South Florida on vaction, you need to do those touristy type of things. You might wonder what there is to do in South Beach... mostly there are just a lot of things to look at. Like crazy cars:

I know, who cares about cars right? Well this last car... it's a Bugatti. Who cares about that either right? I thought the same thing but then we realized that this particular car costs $1.7 Million. Yes, you read that right. Can you even imagine buying a car for that kind of money and then actually daring to drive it? Ridiculous.

There is also lots and lots of people watching, especially during spring break. Owen wasn't enjoying the cars and people as much as we were so we decided to visit the park on the beach for his enjoyment. And enjoy he did.

Such a sad day Monday when he had to jump on the plane home. We already miss him like crazy, Owen keeps going to the guest room and asking where Derek his. He misses his uncle... COME BACK DEREK!!!