February 14

Florida, Day 4

You can read about our trip from the beginning here.

We celebrated Valentine's Day by checking off my two goals for our vacation: a visit to the botanical garden, and sunset at the beach.

My dad gives us a membership to the Missouri Botanical Garden every year, which we love. One of the perks of membership is that we automatically receive reciprocal membership benefits at over 300 other botanical gardens. When we started planning this trip, I immediately began searching to see if there were any reciprocal gardens nearby. It was pretty easy to find that the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens were close, and offered reciprocal benefits. The kids were really excited when we told them that we would be visiting a new botanical garden in Florida, and Maggie had been hoping to visit the garden, too, so she joined us for the morning.

Caleb and Daisy were delighted to find koi fish at the Selby Gardens, just like the koi fish at our Garden! Granted, we have more, bigger fish, but still.

Our first stop was the children's garden, which was set up like a rain forest. I loved that my normally timid and hesitant children came alive here; it was like the garden was already a familiar place to them, and they immediately felt at home.

This swing was a highlight of the trip for Daisy.

This one was, too. I'm pretty sure Chris pushed those kids way higher than was recommended or safe.

Whoa! Daisy captured a wild leopard!

This hammock swing. You guys? I need one of these in my life. I am not even kidding. Where does one find a swing/chair/hammock like this?

Oh, and this botanical garden? Yeah, it looked out over the ocean. Our garden can't even compete in that area. The kids posed for this picture for Grandpa.

And Maggie snapped this one of our silly family. I love it. Daisy's outfit might be my favorite part: leotard, layered over a long-sleeved, sparkly shirt, with a pair of skinny jeans and ginormous turquoise velcro shoes. My girl is rocking that outfit!

This boat out in the bay made me cock my eyebrow; can any more boat-savvy people tell me how on earth it is remaining upright, with no water to support it? Is it a trick boat, or can boats do that?

It was so much fun to have Maggie with us, and Lily took full advantage of the time to further wrap Maggie around her finger. Those two were best buds!

And somehow, without me even realizing it, Eli fell fast asleep on my back. What a good baby.

A highlight of our trip for Caleb was this: 

He found an actual coconut on the ground! We started our trip by doing some research googling on palm trees; Caleb wanted to know why he saw so many of them, but none had coconuts. We soon learned that all coconut trees are palm trees, but not all palm trees are coconut trees. When we found this coconut on the ground, we looked around and finally found a coconut tree! Caleb desperately wanted to keep the coconut, but we instead decided to leave it at the Garden and instead find a place to buy one later on. He was satisfied.

Aren't they cute? Daisy was  nearing nap time, and feeling very annoyed about everything. Otherwise, this could have been a darling picture. We took that as our cue that our time was up, and headed home.

While the girls napped, Chris did a little bit of grocery shopping and brought this home for Caleb: 

His very own coconut! We watched several YouTube videos on how to open a coconut, but only succeeded in draining it of the coconut water. It is much harder than it looks, and our lack of a hammer proved to be our fatal error. The coconut stayed closed.

After the little ones woke up, we packed up a picnic and headed to the beach. A sunset beach picnic with my family on Valentine's Day? Yes, please.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the world seemed to have the same idea, and we sat in beach traffic for about 45 minutes. When we finally got to the beach, the parking lot was packed. As in, not a single spot available, anywhere. It turned out that, while beach sunsets on Valentine's Day are a thing, the big thing was a mass wedding vow renewal ceremony. This is a lame video, but you can see just how many people participated in the vow renewals. Click here.

So we changed plans, and headed to the one other public beach we knew of. We made it just in time for the sunset. 

The kids tried to eat the heart-shaped PB&J sandwiches I made them, but it was cold and windy.

Also, you can see lots of other couples had the same idea. There was also a random man there with his parrot. He took pictures with the bird at sunset, which was both funny and sweet, but mostly funny.

Beautiful, isn't it?

It was a short-lived picnic, but it was lovely.

This was exactly what I was hoping for, and I was happy.

Selfie!

Hi, Eli!

Proof that Chris and I were there together. This is how we celebrated our 17th Valentine's Day together. Pretty perfect, if you ask me.

Yep. Definitely perfect.

Once the sun set, we packed up our stuff and headed to the van to finish our meal. It was just too chilly. As we left, we passed an elderly couple who had been sitting behind us. The man said to us, "You have a beautiful family! You certainly are blessed."

I couldn't agree more.