The better part of Florida!

I really need to finish the Florida story.

It wasn't all blood and fake doctors.

It was sunny - the pool at our Orlando Hotel.

Mike had a packaging conference in Orlando. This is actually where we spent the last 3 days of our trip. I spent a lot of time sitting in a chair out by this pool, getting some sun on my wound (I went without a bandage by then) while he was inside learning about Sustainability in Packaging. We stayed at the Rosen Plaza Hotel, which has conference space, so he didn't even have to leave the building!

At the beginning of our trip we drove to Punta Gorda where we met up with some dog people - who actually don't have dogs anymore - although Fred wants one really badly!
Fred and Sandy Landgraf have been friends of ours since before we got married. They had Springer Spaniels, back in the day that they did obedience, agility and flyball with - probably some tracking too. They retired and moved to Florida about 8 years ago. We've been exchanging xmas cards, and this year Sandy put their email address in the letter. When we started talking about going to Florida for work/vacation I emailed Sandy and asked what we should do, since we've done the Disney thing - and she had lots of good ideas! Those ideas included them putting us up for a couple of nights, and them driving us around to see the sights - which was wonderful! Its amazing how you can not see some friends for quite awhile, and when you get back together with them you fall right back into the old friendship.

They took us to the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers.

A Ford Car and ... some Edison Light Bulbs.

We ate at some really good restaurants - they even provided a chair for my leg!

Sandy and Fred have a lovely home in Punta Gorda.

The front view...










the back view...

and the view of the canal and lake from their backyard.

The living room with a view of the lanai...



from the front door looking toward the kitchen, living room and dining room - and looking out the window in the eating area out to the pool and the lanai.

Since the fake Dr. told me to keep my knee dry and not to bend it, I didn't get any further into the pool than this. Notice I don't have a bandage on the knee, when we were around the house I usually had the bandage off so it could get some air, and heal quicker!

One evening we went and watched the sun set over the water...

Fred and I getting comfortable for the sun show...

Fred pointing out some things for Mike to videotape...

And the sun starts to go down...

It was beautiful!

We went to Sarasota to visit Elke (Fred's cousins wife) who has a very nice place overlooking the water.












The view from Elke's balcony - just awesome! A nice picture of Sandy, Fred and Elke.

Elke taught us a fun card game called Golf. We played a few hands with her and Fred and Sandy before we had to leave for Orlando. She gave us the instruction sheet and 2 decks of cards so we could play later on our trip. It is a really fun game - we had some people over last weekend and 6 of us played and had a great time!

After all the fun we had with Fred and Sandy and Elke we headed back to Orlando for the work part of the trip. Mike didn't have to start the work thing until about noon on Monday so in the morning we went to the Leu Gardens near downtown Orlando.

The garden was beautiful, and then we found this friend in the lake! Only about 4 feet long - actually very cute!

Monday night we went to Downtown Disney to walk off

dinner! Here is a new addition to the Disney gang -

Minnie Mikey!

And then there is the Dawn Princess.

On Tuesday night we went to the Disney Boardwalk - where it was very windy and chilly!

We even had our pictures taken in little photo booth!

And here is what Mike looked like when he realized we had to go home the next day! Can you say Grumpy?

We flew back on Wednesday evening, and we both went back to work on Thursday, and my mom flew back to Georgia that afternoon. It was great to have her come and stay with Charlie - they had a lot of fun together - she is a good cook! He found out that he REALLY like cream tuna on shoestring potatoes...unfortunately there is no photo of that to put in the blog!