Family Vacation

We went to Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach for our family vacation. As most of you know Morgan and I are going to Texas to see Suzy's family next week so this is our first vacation of the summer, but Don is not going to Texas so this is his only vacation of the summer. We decided to do a little back to school shopping at the Sawgrass Mills Mall on Thursday. This is one of my favorite malls to go to, there is something there for everyone. We decided that we were looking for pants for Morgan and shoes for Don. I am planning on finishing Morgans stuff when we are in Texas. We ended up with shoes for everyone and pants for Don. Morgan did find some shirts in the Izod store, and they were having good sales in most of the stores. Mom and Dad both gave Morgan money before we left so that she would have money to spend while we were gone. This is what she did:

Morgan had seen on the Internet that the mall had a build a bear and she asked if we could go there, and I had told her no that we were buying school clothes and not toys, but when she had her own money she asked again and we decided that we would let her go if it was in a part of the mall where we were at (if you have been here you will understand that part) and it was in the area that we were shopping in so she was very happy that she go to go there. She really had a good time at the Build A Bear Workshop. Morgan named her Peace Bear "Summer". While we were there we decided that we are going to take Jillian to the one in Dallas while we are there. That is a sure way to win some points with the kid.

After we got done shopping we went to lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. Morgan really likes to go there. I think that her favorite part is when the "rain" happens in the "rain forest". If you haven't been there this is when it gets dark and lights flash like lightning and it thunders and then there is rain that falls on the fake trees and fake animals. It really is neat. Don's favorite part is that there are tons of huge saltwater fish tanks all over the restaurant. Usually they ask you if you want to sit by the forest or the fish, and we sat by the fish the last time. I got to pick this time and I told the lady it didn't matter as long as I could sit in a booth. Well all the booths are in the forest area, so we were by a huge monkey. It was really neat.

The hotel that we stayed at was in Deerfield Beach and it was about 20 min away from the mall so we went to check in. We had reservations to go on a deep sea fishing trip at 7 pm and buy the time we got checked in to the hotel and all of our stuff stored in the room it was pretty much time to go get on the boat, good thing we left early because the traffic was really bad. Thank goodness we had the GPS from Mom and Bob, she got us to the right place no problem. Here are the results of the fishing trip:
What you say that you don't see any fish! That would be because Morgan and Don each

caught one fish that was not legal size and then at the end of the night Don caught one fish, and he gave it away. No sense cleaning and storing one fish. The little girl in the pictures was only 8 years old, and she caught more fish than anyone else on the boat. Her and Morgan became friends right away and they spent a good part of the night together. We teased Morgan that she is just like Grandma Bob, she makes friends everywhere. The ocean was relatively calm and we had a good time, even thought we didn't catch anything. It was a nice evening and the wind was blowing so it was not even hot out there. We got back off the boat about midnight and went to the 24 hour IHOP for a really late dinner.

On Friday we went to Hollywood so that we could check out the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino that they have. We are not people who gamble regularly, but Don likes to see how the other Casino's are and check things out. I understand that, I like to see other jails and see how they do things. We had gotten a booklet that showed that they have other things there and they have a shopping center and a Seminole Indian Museum, so we thought there would be things to do. While we were driving we were talking about vacations that our friends had taken and we talked about the pictures on Heidi's blog of the trip her family took to the Keys and I was telling Morgan about the Iguana's and we got to talking about the problem in south Florida with them running wild. Well what do you think we saw at the Hard Rock?

The four of them were sitting on the patio of a restaurant watching this water show. It was so neat to see them after we had been talking about them being in the wild.

We ate lunch at one of Morgan's favorite restaurant's, Hooters, she said that her Grandpa Bob would be jealous. He is the one that introduced her to chicken wings, and when she was younger you had to spell it if you didn't want to have to make a trip there. She would get mad if he went without her.

We went back to the hotel and went to the beach. Now I am not one that particularly loves the ocean, I am more a pool girl, but this beach was awesome. I loved every minute of being there. We stayed at a hotel that was only 600 feet from the beach, so we were really close. We walked down there and stayed for about 2 hours then went back to the hotel pool for a little bit. We had to teach Morgan how to jump in the waves to not get pushed over, I thought that was just something that you knew, but I guess not. She had a really good time. Normally when we go to the beach we go to the Gulf and the waves are not as bad as the Atlantic.

Later we went to a restaurant that we found in the little book that the hotel had. It said that the restaurant was a casino in the 1920's and was famous for hosting past presidents. The book said that you had to go to the marina and get on a boat to take you to the island that the restaurants is on. The boat took us across the canal, as Don called it, and we went to Lighthouse Island to Cap's Restaurant. The place was an old wooden building that looked about 100 years old.

I had a really good chicken dinner, Morgan had Dolphin and Don had a Seafood Medley. Unfortunately Don and Morgan were both unhappy with the food that they had. Don ate most of his, but said it wasn't very good. Morgan ate 2 bites and said it was gross. Oh well. I thought it would be neat, but I thought wrong. When we left this cat was on the porch.
When we were waiting on the boat to take us back to the car we saw this crab on the dock. That was pretty cool. Then on the way back to the hotel we saw this huge crab walking in the road. Don saw it first and stopped so we could see out the front window. When I saw it I grabbed my camera and got out of the car. Morgan got out and we were in the middle of the road taking pictures, who cares about the cars stacking up behind us, we were tourists! While we were taking pictures of it his legs were clapping together, he wasn't happy with us being there. If we had picked it up he would have pinched us for sure. This picture just does not show how big this thing was. I was impressed by his size.

Well, I think I have told you everything, so I am done boring you now.