January 30, 2009

Florida - Friends & Family Edition

Hi all. So, Sarah and I got back last night from a wonderful trip to Florida. It was, needless to say, a nice break from the still mostly frigid temps up here in CNY. Great Bear played for the Florida Snow Ball in Gulfport (near St Pete). It was one of my all time favorite dance weekends. Right on the beach, great food, great floor, great dances, tons of birds. Aweosme. Sarah flew down on Sunday and we did a bunch of birding. More on that later. But we also visited ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) which is this very cool, global, Christian, agriculture-oriented, networking facility that we heard about from our friends Megan and Andy Newhouse. Sarah and I are both really excited about this place and would love to get more involved. Check out their website for more info. We also got to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ziegler in Vero Beach and went on an airboat ride. I must have drunk nearly my weight in fresh squeezed orange juice! That stuff is so amazing. Anyway, we had a great time... it was a little hard to come back. Actually... we literally almost missed our flight! You know, this blog is called Birds & Music because, as I've mentioned before, that's about all I know anything about. To demonstrate just how clueless I am... apparently and thoroughly unbeknownst to me, there's this football game thing called the Super Bowl that just happened to be gearing up in Tampa right as we were trying to find our way to the airport. And it turns out that a whole lotta people go to this Super Bowl thing, making the driving in that immediate area pretty ridiculously slow and treacherous, especially when your flight starts boarding in 10 minutes! We barely made it and thank goodness the weather wasn't bad. So we got home safe and now I'm just catching up on things, putting out fires, and trying to force myself not to spend too many hours at a time reading Breaking Dawn. Here are some pics...

Dana and JanTommy - wow, man... just, wow...Rima and NoahThe notorious Larry, Eden & SamSarah at ECHOMe on the airboatGrandpa & Grandma - great to see you as always