Fun in Florida

It was a hard time to leave with all we have pending at Bear Lake. On the other hand it was a delight to meet about forty new couples who are doing a great job raising their children in Florida! We were invited to speak at a weekend retreat on Gasparilla Island at Boca Grande, Florida at a delightful place called The Gasparilla Inn. Southern Florida’s version of the West coast’s Del Coronado.

 

Around the corner was the gorgeous Gasparilla Club on the ocean where we enjoyed the beach before and after our speech, found great exercise equipment and delicious food. We loved meeting a lot of dynamic parents with entitled (but polite, beautiful and terrific) kids and who were ready for our message:Give your kids more by giving them less!”

We were glad for that hat because on Friday night they had a beautiful dinner themed around the days of the Speak Easies in the ‘40s. Feathered plums were everywhere and that hat was good for everything!

Sadly I didn’t get any pictures of that but this is the huge tent they had set up on Saturday night for a carnival for the kids, complete with booths all around the room and great carnival acts and food! The flowers weren’t bad either!

We really enjoyed these great moms and especially good Dads on the day before Father’s Day.

Driving back to the airport in Tampa, we were impressed with the amazing infrastructure of Florida with beautiful freeways everywhere. There were no mountains to cross but lots of amazing ways to cross the abundance of waterways! This structure across Tampa Bay just blew us away!

See the “hole” for ships to go through in the middle? Those gold “pillars” are actually incredibly huge yellow cables. Pretty impressive!

 

Pretty blurry on my iPhone 4S but you get the idea.

We had a spectacular five hour ride home on one of those days when the weather brings about clouds that are out of this world (no pun intended)! I felt as though I was on Mount Everest! I missed the best part before I thought to take pictures.

 

 

What a wonderful world!