Wednesday it snowed at home, most of the day. Thursday night Scott and I hopped on a flight headed to eighty degree temps, sunshine, and the mesmerizing ocean waves. We arrived in Florida after midnight. We are usually in bed by nine, so we were exhausted and slap happy even while we waited over a half hour to get our rental car at the airport Hertz. Our little Chevy Spark has an interesting license plate of CHEWE 4. The engine sounds like a weed wacker, but this little guy has four doors and cruises just fine on Highway 95. We had met a great guy on the plane named Frank. He is living in downtown Chicago now, but he just moved here from New York two years ago. He shared some fun tidbits with us. First and foremost he inspired the trip we are headed on now. He told us about a Flea Market in Fort Lauderdale. He also told us that our plane was landing in Hollywood. Who knew Florida had a Hollywood too? Other than just being grateful for a nice gentleman to sit next to for four hours, I loved that Frank was such a proud Dad. He said, “I live to live the life my kids live.” His daughter is currently in Tanzania studying the educational system and preparing to hike Mount Kilamajaro.
Once we finally arrived at Casa Delray we enjoyed a few sips of wine, but I fell asleep sitting up mid-conversation twice and called it a day sometime after 1am.
Friday
We slept in until at least eight. That is crazy late for us as I am usually up by 4:30 and Scott is usually up by 6. We went for a run for an hour and ten minutes. After that we headed to Aldi’s to get some food. On our way out of Aldi’s we ran into a UPS driver who had seen us running earlier. He was too funny, “Hey! Didn’t I see you two running earlier? Yeah. Yeah. She was on fire and you were having a hard time keeping up!” Too funny. With almost a full foot in height more than me, Scott takes one step for my every two. The humidity allowed us to take an instant shower while running! It seemed so incredibly hot in the upper 70’s. We chatted with the neighbor for quite a while after shopping and then finally ate some breakfast at around 11. 
Finally we headed to the beach. Scott does a pretty good job of letting go of all there is to think about, but I spent quite a while trying to stop thinking about all the things I could worry about back at home. Finally, while I watched Scott bob up and down in the ocean waves I listened to the waves and I turned my focus to the clouds dancing ever so slowly. Finally I let it all go. I know getting back into Tuesday is going to be slightly painful, but for right now, right now, it is about Scott and I and remembering the cute couple that we are when all the other distractions and worries are removed. Scott’s super white skin was cooked, even with toothpaste consistency sunscreen, after two hours. So we headed back to Casa Delray. Scott attempted to get some technology working while I danced around the kitchen making cookie brownies. I caught up on the phone with my dad since he just had his second hip surgery earlier this week. It is disconcerting having him be in a very questionable nursing home, but he has a great sense of humor and toughed it out once before.
We headed out the door to Olive Garden well after our normal dinner time. Scott asked our waitress about suggestions for things to do in the area. The topic turned to the Everglades. Scott mentioned that we had been there when we were eighteen. The waitress, who was very appropriately named Sunny, was surprised we have been together since college. She is from Key West and studying International Business. She had some incredible stories to share about her travels. I especially enjoyed her stories about Australia when she camped in the outback, stayed with some sheep herders, and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. We shared some stories about our travels together. She wanted to know our secret. She wanted to know how we had been together so long, achieved our goals and dreams, and still managed to stay so happy. She offered to buy us a dessert. She said we were seriously the happiest couple she had ever met while working at Olive Garden. We had a good laugh over that statement. Scott shared that one of the things that kept us going was that he has big dreams, he shares them, I recover from my shock of hearing them, and then because I am pretty easy going and thankful for being pushed out of my comfort zone, we enjoy his wild adventures. I shared that we went through some times where we didn’t see each other for months in college and when we spent weeks apart when he traveled for work when we were married. Those were hard times, but we appreciated seeing each other that much more when we did. Scott stressed making sure she achieved as many of her travel and adventure dreams as she could before she did settle down with a family, as once you do, it is a bit more of a challenge to make it all work.
We called the kids and Meme on the way back to Delray. The kids were too busy having fun to chat with us, but thankfully Meme shared the details of the day with us. We made it through a few moves of a chess game once we arrived home, but we were worn out from our day of rest.
Saturday
Scott had suggested waking up early to catch the sunrise. I love getting up before the sun, before the world becomes full of noise. We took a lot of pictures, but none of them do the sunrise justice. We woke up at 5:30, were to the beach by 6:00, and watched the sunrise until 7:00. It was one of those moments I need to be able to transport to whenever the noise of the world tries to push out the peace. The steady crashing of the waves, the dark slowly giving way to the light, the birds soaring, and the quiet companionship of the man who asked me to date him and marry him with the same statement, “Will you share your life with me?” If only life could give us more moments like this and less moments of negotiating housework, work schedules, and missing kids’ shoes. We went for a run/walk along the ocean after we watched the sun come up. Then we headed back to our temporary home to eat some breakfast and pack some lunch for today’s road trip.
We are headed to Biscayne National Park, about a two hour drive. We arrived at about noon to a sunny 91 degree temperature. The park was hosting a clean up day. They were transporting volunteers via boat to the keys to pick up trash. One of the organizers shared with us a previous experience of his scuba diving and transplanting coral polyps. We need to explore volunteering some time with the National Coral Reef Restoration group he mentioned. Not only is Biscayne National Park free, but they offer free canoeing, kayaking, boat, and snorkeling tours. We arrived too late for the boat tours but we were able to get into a snorkeling tour. They even had masks, snorkels, and fins for us to borrow. You do have to be sixteen or older, so that won’t be a tour we can do again with the kids for a while. Our volunteer guide shared with us the difference between keys and islands. Actually he asked if we knew what it was and Scott answered perfectly: keys are formed biologically versus islands which are formed geologically. Our guide did share that 60% of our oxygen comes from underwater plants. We were able to see air bubbles coming up from the plants while we were snorkeling. The weather was perfect even though it is now 99 degrees, the partial cloud cover was beneficial.
South Beach
