Beach-Hopping 2017: NASA and Tampa

Michael planned to fly down to Florida and meet us in Tampa, where his grandmother lives. On our way there, we stopped at the Kennedy Space Center so Rylan, our future astronomer, could revel in space exploration. I handed my camera to him and let him go crazy while we were there, so the photos are not up to my blog standards...I do really love this photo we had taken with an astronaut, though. Wish I could remember his name, but we listened to him speak and it was awesome. My favorite part of the Kennedy Space Center.


In Tampa, we had our first Airbnb experience. It was about the same price as a hotel, but we each got our own room, we had a kitchen for cooking meals (again keeping the costs down), and the boys got a few days to catch up on TV and video games. We would definitely do it again.

Michael's Grandma Lavers sends us THE BEST Christmas letter. It is one of my favorite parts of Christmas, and I look forward to it every year. She really knows how to work retirement, getting heavily involved in her senior living home and also helping out with dog shows. Going to see her in Florida has been on my to do list for the past few years. We took her out for dinner, which involved multiple trips in our one car between her house and the restaurant, so unfortunately, we goofed up the photo op and only got pictures with Michael and Rylan.




The next day, Michael took the boys to the beach in Tampa, our only Gulf Coast beach on the trip, while I went to the Salvador Dali museum. Some of his art was really cool, but my favorite part by far was the museum itself. Such cool architecture and fun gardens.





On the way out of town the next morning, we had breakfast with some old friends from Raleigh 4th ward, the Andersons. Again, I flaked on the photo ops, so I have no photographic evidence. But we did really enjoy seeing them!