Our Trip to Florida

We just got back from Florida.  I began writing this blog entry while I was in Florida and hope to finish it now.

A bit of explanation is in order.

My daughter has Rett Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects mainly girls. My wife is very active in the Rett community. In fact, she organized the very first Rett Syndrome charity event in Utah this year. A company based in Florida heard about her and wanted to film an interview with her. At first they discussed coming to Utah to film, but as it ended-up being cheaper to fly us out to Florida.

There's no way we would have been able to afford a week long trip to Florida on our own. I've been unemployed since February, 2010. But even so, we've never really had much savings, so this was still a once in a lifetime trip for our family.

My wife spent hours planning the trip, arranging for our hotel stay and airline tickets. Bless her for that.

We decided to stay in a hotel close to the airport on Friday night (18th of June). The reason for this was we had an early flight Saturday morning. We awoke at 4:30 in the morning and a few hours later we lifted-off from SLC International Airport. My wife and I had flown before, but the kids hadn't, and particularly the 2 oldest had not flown before. Emily thought the take-off was really cool. I love flying. I love looking out the window and seeing how everything looks from so high up. The houses and cars and everything looks like miniature toys!

Our first stop was in Houston, TX. We ended-up getting back on the same exact plane for our connecting flight from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale, FL. We flew over the Gulf of Mexico for the majority of our flight, which was very pretty. There was a recent oil spill, a big one, which has been in the news. I think we flew over it. We saw patches of water that seemed to have something on top of the water.

Anyway, we landed in Ft. Lauderdale a few hours later. We took a few pictures from our hotel room on the 7th floor.  You can make out the Atlantic Ocean on the horizon:

Pictures of me, Emily and the inside of our hotel room:  :)

The next day we drove down to the Keys.  We ended-up staying at the Cheeca Lodge Resort, which was a really nice 5-star hotel.  We felt weird being around all of the rich people, ha ha ha.

The drive down:

The entrance to the Cheeca Lodge Resort, and Hotel pics of the room and exterior:

While we were down in the Keys we got to go to the Dolphin Research Center and my wife and kids were able to swim with the dolphins and make them do tricks:

The next day we checked-out of the Cheeca Lodge and drove up to Tampa, FL. We spent a few days there. Found out my laptop had gotten left behind at the Cheeca Lodge. We were able to get it back...whew!!! We were able to see my wife Syndi's Uncle Gerri ("Gary") and his wife. The next day we were going to go to Sea World, but Isabelle was not feeling very good (neither was my wife) so we just stayed inside and kept cool. The next evening we met with some other families in the Tampa area that have girls with Rett Syndrome. We flew home on Saturday.


I have to admit...while Florida looks nice...it does not feel nice! It is hot and very very VERY humid! The most comfortable times for me were the hotel rooms or in the rental car with the AC blasting away! Going outside was miserable. My wife and kids got mild sun burns; I am surprised they did not burn worse than they did. Even Isabelle came through it okay!

I guess that is it for now. I'll come back and add more later if I want to / need to.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED: tons more pics of the dolphins with my wife and kids

more pics here as well!