Since Sundays are for family, day two was spent visiting Brandans uncle and his family. They live a little north of Tampa. The drive to their house from our Airbnb was just under an hour.

Brandan made the comment the other day as we were driving to his moms for Thanksgiving that an hour drive in Florida seems so much shorter than an hour drive in Iowa. We both agreed that it must be because Florida has a much more enjoyable landscape than Iowa, especially in November.

We had a really good time seeing them and catching up. The barbecue was great and the pool was a lot of fun. Even though it was a little chilly to be swimming for my liking, I got in for the kids. I’m not much of a pool girl unless it’s 100*. As we were drying off getting ready to leave everyone starts talking about the neighborhood alligator that lives in the pond behind the pool. Me being me, I say “lets go see if we can spot it” we made our way over to the fence at the other end of the pool in front of the pond. We searched for anything that could resemble one but couldn’t find anything.

Monday was a event packed day. After Brandan and Ben hit the gym and breakfast at the airbnb, we made our way to Sarasota to meet Brandans friend from Colorado for lunch at Marina Jacks. This was a nice restaurant with the perfect Florida ambience. They had indoor/outdoor seating right on the marina and a variety of food options for the adventurous and vanilla palattes. It was a really good lunch with good company. James owns the #1 rated jet ski business in Sarasota, Next Level Jet Ski Rental. After lunch, we headed over to the dock to have some fun.

After playing around on the water for a couple hours, we had to get ready for our family photos. We knew we wanted to have professional photos done while we were out there. A few weeks before we left I got on Facebook and started looking for a photographer in the area. Once I found one I liked most, I reached out and booked a date. We booked it earlier in the week just incase we had to reschedule due to weather. She had us meet her at lido key beach. Luckily it was only ten minutes away from where we were cuz we were of course, running a few minutes late. When we got to the area she spotted us getting out of the car and came right over. As we were walking to the beach she got to know us and the kids. She did such an amazing job with our photos and our family. Working with her was easy and we all had a lot of fun.

We finished our session around 6 and headed back toward the car. Washed the sand off of us and change our clothes. Everyone but Brandan and Brielle had gotten pretty wet. Luckily we were going to my moms condo in Orlando for the night so we had extra clothes to wear. From lido key to Orlando was 2.5 hours. Even at that time the traffic was horrible and it ended up taking us over 3 hours to get there. We arrived around 9:30. We were all pretty tired when we arrived so after a short visit with my mom and her boyfriend we hit they hay.