Adams Family Visits for the Holidays: Christmas at Lauderdale by the Sea (December 2015)

Last Christmas part of my family was able to spend the holidays with us in Florida.  We thought the perfect activity to do on Christmas Day would be going to the beach...something we'd never get to do back home on Christmas Day!
One of my favorite beaches in the area is Lauderdale By the Sea, mostly because there are lots of cute shops and yummy places to eat along the beach front and it's safe and clean.  I had no clue how crowded it would actually be on Christmas day!  The weather was nice, but since there had recently been a storm surge the previous day, the beach was covered in some sea weed.  I know that I've become purely snobby when it comes to beach conditions, but I wasn't too happy with how the beach looked Christmas day.
Still we had a lot of fun and my brothers and dad didn't mind the cooler low 70 temps of the ocean water.  It was a great relaxing way to spend a few hours on Christmas day.

We had to take a few pics before setting up camp.

Here are just a few highlights from our adventures at the beach...

Can we just talk about how adorable Gel is at 8 months pregnant!

There were actual waves that day!

The rest of us relaxed and played in the sand.

Ready to jump in!

Having fun in the sand

Dallas and Daxton made the cutest "snowman"

The seaweed worked pretty well for the hair of our snowman, with sea shells and a couple branches for the rest.

Beach snuggles are the best Christmas present ever!

We stayed until the sun started to go down and noticed all the pretty holiday lights turn on.  It was such a great way to spend the day!

We sure love Lauderdale By the Sea!

Adams Family Visits for the Holidays: Christmas (December 2015)

Like I mentioned in the previous posts, my parents, two little brothers, and a sister in law, were all able to join us in Florida last Christmas for the holiday break.  It was such an incredible feeling having our home full with laughter and family.  We had spent the first couple days of our break visiting Zoo Miami and the Everglades Alligator tour, so we decided to spend the next couple slowing things down and simply enjoying the holiday season.  We went last minute gift shopping, relaxing at home, and getting things ready for Christmas.

Our Christmas card for 2015
Love our little family

Daxton and Daddy had fun putting together one of Daxton's preschool crafts.  Kimberly was so sweet to keep all the pieces for him so he could complete it at home.  The nativity turned out so cute.

Daxton also found a new place to carry his tools around the house...

The day before Christmas Eve, Gel was the best sis in law ever!  She colored my hair and did a fantastic job, so I didn't have to have multicolored grown out roots any more.  She's pretty much amazing!

On Christmas Eve we had our traditional meal with the missionaries.  I love how this tradition started way back to when I was just a baby and now each of us siblings have incorporated it into our homes.  We got the missionaries simple presents and then stuffed them with yummy food.  It turned out Elder Tanner was cousins with Stuart's college roommate.  What a small world!

After dinner we put everyone to work by wrapping presents.  Every year we sponsor a family in need and then drop off presents anonymously.  When back in Washington, we would join in the "drop and run" of the presents, but here in Florida that's not the safest idea.  So we had the missionaries deliver all the presents.

It was so much fun getting everyone involved in wrapping presents and organizing them into boxes for the family in need.  It felt like Santa's workshop!

Dax loved being on bow duty with Uncle Bradley. 

Our super helpful Elders this year:

Top left-- Elder Reed

Top right-- Elder Anderson

Bottom left-- Elder Tanner

Bottom right-- Elder Wardle

Everything ready to be delivered!

After everything was cleaned up, Stuart, Gel, Dax, Dallas, and I decided we wanted to do one more Christmas Eve activity before heading to bed.  We drove up the road and went to the Trade Winds festival of lights.  It was a drive through light show, with several different light displays along the side of the road.  It was pretty cute and Dax loved standing up through the sunroof during our drive.

Everything set up and ready for Christmas!

Santa was good to us this year, especially Daxton!

Super happy Christmas morning

Santa brought him a new tool bench with a whole bunch of new tools.  He could not have been more excited!

Christmas morning snuggles with Grandpa and Grandma

Everyone's Christmas stockings

Opening presents Christmas morning

One of Daxton's favorites was the toot gun from Uncle Stuart.

Highlights from Christmas presents...

poop emoji pillows, tshirt with a cat riding a shark, baby girl clothes, tickets for mom and dad to see La Nouba in Orlando, and new art work for Dallas's office.

Christmas day was spent opening presents, relaxing, eating yummy food, playing games, and building a couple gingerbread houses.  It was truly a perfect day and we loved having family stay with us for the holidays!

Adams Family Visits for the Holidays: Everglades Alligator Farm (December 2015)

Our next big adventure continued the following day when we got to drive down and experience the Everglades Alligator Farm.  We've gone to pretty much every airboat ride establishment in south florida and this one is by far our favorite for many reasons.  We couldn't wait to share it with my family!

A quick family pic before entering the park

Inside the park there are a few animal interactions and shows, several animal enclosures, and then of course the airboat ride.  We had a little time to wait for our airboat tour, so we checked out some of the animal enclosures first.  Dax loved sitting next to the anaconda as it swam back and forth in it's tank.  At one point the head of the anaconda came right next to Daxton's face...Dax and I didn't like that as much!

We loved looking at all the different tanks of alligators from all age groups.  They are pretty stinking cute when babies, but those teeth are still very sharp!

So many gators!

We thought it was pretty funny for dad to take a picture with the deceased alligator named Grandpa.  Daxton kept saying, "Grandpa's taking a picture with grandpa!"

After exploring the rest of the park and seeing a TON of gators, it was finally our time for the airboat tour.  I brought along our gopro and waterproof case for our adventure.  I was super excited because we had taken so many fun tours, but while we were on it I kept thinking, "Why is this tour so slow? Usually they go super fast and do tons of turns."  Come to find out, when looking back through the pics on the gopro, there was a guy who stood up the entire ride...of course we couldn't go fast with him standing the entire time!  As you can tell I was a little bugged.

We still ended up having a great time and my family loved it.  The scenery was pretty cool, with several birds, gators, and vegetations for us to look at along the way.

About to board our airboat

Leaving the dock

I love Gel's face...a little excited and a lot nervous 😂

It's so crazy to be out on the sawgrass and glide over the water effortlessly.  It was pretty fun and our guide still did a couple 180s even with the guy standing up in the back.

On our way back we were able to see a couple massive iguanas in the trees.  When we docked we made our way over to the alligator feeding area and stopped to see the emus along the way.

The alligator feeding took place at the large breeding pond so there were tons of massive gators waiting to be fed.  It was pretty crazy to see how close the guy got...luckily there was a fence inbetween him and the gators.  

After our adventures at the alligator farm, we stopped at the amazingly yummy farmers market, Robert is Here.  They serve the most incredible shakes and fresh produce.  You can find pretty much everything there.  As we were waiting in line for our shakes, Dax said, "Mom there's a snake on the fence."  It totally looked fake so I went to look closer and it began to move!  I swear, only in Florida!  The worker who removed it told us that it was a harmless garden snake, but I'm no so sure...

We all enjoyed our yummy shakes while Bradley enjoyed his fried grasshoppers 😳

As we were driving back to the freeway, Dallas slammed on his brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.  He had spotted a local BBQing along the side of the road.  It turned out to be the most amazing BBQ we had ever had!  It was pretty legit with a simply tank grill, food truck, no chairs, etc.  Dallas, my brothers, and Gel were like little kids in a candy store 😂

It was some seriously good BBQ and super messy.  We all ate it up in a matter of minutes using our car trunk as a table.  Dallas said it was the best birthday present we could have ever gotten him.  Dad, in his best OCD manners, waited on the side with wet wipes and napkins to clean everything up!

On our drive home, we made sure to stop at the Fort Lauderdale temple.  We are so blessed to have a temple 20 minutes from where we live!

Such a gorgeous temple and grounds

It was a another fun day full of adventures!

Adams Family Visits for the Holidays: Miami Zoo (December 2015)

Our home in Fort Lauderdale is 3,116 miles away from my parents' home in Washington.  It takes over 6 hours on a direct flight to reach Seattle.  Needless to say, often times I feel VERY far from my family living here in south Florida.
Last Christmas, mom and dad gave me the best news I could possibly imagine...they, my two little brothers, and my sister-in-law were all going to come out for Christmas break to spend the holidays with us in Florida!  I spent the next couple months preparing for the ultimate itinerary of fun to fill our days and let them see the highlights of where we live.  It was such a blast having them all out here!  We had a house full of family and I couldn't have been happier!

Since everyone flew in on different flights, Stuart, Gel, and Bradley on a red eye, with my parents coming into town later that night.  We spent the first day letting everyone relax, rest, and hit the beach for a few hours before mom and dad got in later that evening.

The next day we embarked on our epic three week adventure list by hitting Zoo Miami.  My youngest brother, Bradley, was completing his undergrad in Animal Sciences and loves animals so we thought it would be a fun way to start off our trip.  Zoo Miami is 280 acres and since mom's knee and back were still recovering and Gel was 8 months pregnant, we decided to rent a couple surrey bikes for our adventure.  It was pretty funny to see us pedaling up and down the paths, swerving to run each other off the road every now and then.  Daxton had a blast climbing from spot to spot being totally spoiled by aunt, uncles, and grandparents.

Our whole crazy crew about to set off!
(L to R) Gel, Stuart, Mom, Dax, Dad, Me, and Bradley

For the first few minutes all you could hear was us laughing as we got adjusted to pedaling the surrey bikes.  Love some of the facial expressions in the pics below!

Everyone was pretty patient with me documenting everything, especially dad who willingly stuck his head in the elephant's butt poster.  We saw lots of different animals along the path, including rhinos, lions, otters, and a bear.

Daxton was in pure heaven with all the extra attention.  He followed grandpa around everywhere!  There was a gorilla sitting right next to the observation window, which was pretty cool, but from my angle you could see that the gorilla was taking it's poop and throwing it down the drop off behind...so gross!

Visiting the elephants and zebras

Selfies while pedaling

Love mom's photobomb in the top pic below!

One of our favorite things to do at Zoo Miami is feed the giraffe!  Everyone got a kick out of how long the giraffes' tongues stretched.  I love mom's face in the pic below...priceless!  

Every time Dax would see a tongue coming closer he would squeal and laugh.  He thought it was so funny to see the giraffes wrap the lettuce and pull it away.  I love the pics below...you can see how much fun he was having.

Family photo in front of all the giraffes

One of our favorite parts of the zoo is the Amazon trek.  The surrey bikes aren't allowed along the path, so we walked the rest of the way.  Dax loved being able to run from enclosure to enclosure and then ride in his stroller to drink his icee from Grandpa every so often.

I don't know where this cutie gets his energy!

He climbed on anything and everything and loved asking grandpa about all the different animals.

As we were leaving the Amazon, Dax sprinted towards the splash pad fountains.  It was all I could do to rip his shirt off before getting completely soaked!  That kid LOVES water!  He thought it was pretty funny to give grandpa hugs while dripping wet.

It was a perfect day at the zoo and a great way to kick off our adventures for the holiday break!

That night, we got to celebrate Dallas's 35th birthday.  Dallas had to work that day to finish some important things before the holidays, but he got to join us for the rest of the fun the next couple weeks.  We sure love this hard working man of ours!