We managed to escape the cold Chicago winter for a week over the kids winter break. Sort of.

This time our trip to Florida had unusually cold temperatures.

At least the cold was bearable. Unlike Chicago, we could still be outside during the day. It just wasn’t warm enough for endless days of beach visits and pool swims.

So what else is there to do in Florida beside get your bathing suit on? Stay tuned, dear readers…

Our first day we visited Sugar Sand Park in Boca Raton.

The last time we visited this park was closed for renovations. We were planning on running around for about an hour but the boys were enjoying the relative warmth so much we ended up staying here almost 3 hours.

Afterwards we enjoyed the $1 carousel rides. Aaron asked to go again and when he got his gold token to ride he said he wasn’t riding, he’d rather save his shiny coin. Adam very nicely let him ride and keep his coin.

We also got to see both grandparent’s right away. First, Japo’s house were she had yummy Publix sandwiches waiting for us.

They were all fascinated by her huge collection of coins from her extensive travels.

Aaron’s favorite part, however, was discovering the ‘butt picture’ in Japo’s study. 

Afterwards we spent time at Grandpa Devensky’s.

He took us on a tour of the complex searching for iguanas. I didn’t realize the iguana population has exploded in Florida and because they don’t have any natural predators they are becoming a real problem. In his complex alone we saw four of them!

The next morning we visited the Everglades Holiday Park. Ben requested this visit that we see Alligators. And Sharks. We tried our best to accommodate him.

We bundled up in our winter jackets for the airboat ride. We had 2 alligator spotting and one iguana spotting.

The ticket also included an alligator show. We didn’t realize it at the time but the show was run by Gator Boy’s own Paul Bedard. Apparently he used to have an insane alligator rescue show on Animal Planet.

We also got some good Dim Sum in while we were still in Fort Lauderdale at the Gold Marquess.

We were lucky to be able to join Grandpa Devensky’s weekly family dinners with his wife Susan’s family. 

Auntie Doris was there too. 

One thing about having four kids is that you can never give them as much attention as they want or need. So many people around giving the kids so much attention was worth all the hassle of traveling to get there.

Other things fun things we did included mini golf.

Sam even managed a hole in one!

We took the older boys to see the latest Star Wars movie while the twins got time with Grandpa.

Both Adam and I have fond memories of visiting Lion Country Safari as kids. So it was really cool to be able to take them back to have the same experience we did. 

We saw so many animals up close!

This Ostrich was particularly aggressive, tapping on our window with his beak.

One night we went with Japo to Chipotle. Japo brought me a magazine she found at the supermarket because it had an article about Hong Kong. But I never got a change to read the article because the kids took over the magazine and wouldn’t give me a turn.

The magazine was Maxim’s, a girly magazine. Ben said it was the most interesting magazine he had ever read! Once again, Japo delivered ‘butt pictures’!

We did manage to swim one day in the pool. It was too cold by my standards, luckily Adam braved the water for me.

I could only manage the hot tub.

We also tried to have a beach day on our last day, the warmest day that we visited. When we arrived at the beach there were 15 mile an hour winds and the red AND the purple flag were up at the lifeguard stand. Red is for rough water with riptides, purple was for dangerous marine life. 

It was too rough to swim but I thought it would be okay to dip our feet in. After a few minutes, a Portuguese Man of War washed up on the shore! 

We checked out the pier, looking for those sharks Ben wanted.

Sadly, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t see any.

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