Catching up: Spring Break

One of the best things about being teachers is the breaks you get: 2 weeks Christmas break, summer break of course, and over a week Spring break. This year our spring break was at the end of April. We went to see our good friends Juleen and Matt in Florida. It was a ton of fun. We were so excited to get out of chilly DC and enjoy the warm weather for awhile. We did a lot of fun things with Juleen and Matt. We had several BBQ's, played lots of fun games and relaxed, went out to eat, went swimming at their pool, went dolphin watching along the ocean (and saw tons!), went to a cool nature and animal conservatory, went to Sea World, and spent a day at the beach. Unfortunately, I got really sick half way though so we had to cut our vacation short and head home a few days early. We really enjoyed the time we did have though! Thanks Juleen and Matt for being such great hosts! Here are lots of pictures (sorry they're out of order - I'm too lazy to fix them.)


Juleen and I at Sea World looking at a manitee. Sea World was a lot of fun, but I was also a little disappointed. It wasn't as cool as I expected it to be for how expensive it was. The dolphin and whale shows were cool, but outside of that it was just like a cool aquarium - not quite worth the money. There were only 3 rides there and we didn't end up going on any of them. I'm really glad we went, but next time I'll spend my money on Universal studios or probably Disney World.

Chad and I at the beach. We had so much fun laying out and relaxing and playing in the waves. I wish we could have spent a few more days on the beach.

Below are some pictures of the whale and dolphin shows at Sea World. The dolphin show was my favorite because the trainers were in the water with the dolphins. They rode on the dolphins and had the dolphins push them through the water by their feet. It was pretty cool. The dolphin show also had some cool trapeze artists that made it exciting. The whale show was pretty cool too, but apparently it used to be better when the trainers could be in the water with them too. They can't any more after one of the whales killed a trainer a few years ago. The coolest part of the killer whale show was when the whales splashed the crowd at the end. We got soaked! It was so hot outside though that we were happy to be wet!

















The picture above on the left is of Juleen and I at the beach, on the right is at the nature conservatory.















Above on the right are Chad and Juleen using a stick to catch baby jellyfish. They caught a few, but I think they were dead. That was the first time I had seen jellyfish outside of an aquarium. The picture on the left is Chad and I at the beach.


Here are Juleen and I watching for dolphins. You can see one in the background of the picture (well, it's fin).

Lots more pictures: