Ft. Lauderdale, Everglades, Keys

 So here's a few more photos from our trip to Florida.
This is Iris on the balcony one morning.  The sun rises right over the ocean, right into the hotel room. Tom got up early with Iris one morning to watch it.

 

We also saw some beautiful moon rises.

 Our last day in Ft. Lauderdale, we went to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.  This is me and kids by the swimming statue (Mark Spitz?) and in front of their pool. That day was a big pre-Olympic diving competition with some of the world's best divers.  Tom really enjoyed the HoF. I'm really glad we fit it in.

 

Clark (the Original Gumbo) on the Gumbo Limbo Trail in the Everglades NP

 We also go to visit the Everglades National Park. We went to the visitors center and went on a guided hike on the Anhinga Trail. We didn't see an Anhinga (a bird) but we saw lots of fish and a tiny alligator.  Then we did a quick and shady and mosquitoey trail - Gumbo Limbo Trail. Iris loved it and got 18 mosquito bites.

 Then we drove down HWY 1 on the chain of little Islands known as the Florida Keys. We stopped to refresh ourselves at  Harry Harris Park in Tavernier. It had this great pool. The water came from the ocean and fish were swimming around, but it was portioned off as a swimming area. It was perfect for Clark and Iris

Sunset on Key West and a Ship

We visited Key West and went to the Southernmost Point, as well as Mile 0. Key West is like a hot, beachy New Orleans. 









On the way back north on our way out of the Keys and Florida, we stopped at John Pennecamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo. Most of the park is underwater and awesome for snorkeling and scuba diving. We didn't do either, but we did do some wading with our babies.  They have glass bottom boat tours, which we vow to do next time we come through!

Making Gumbo - for dinner

We are back from our trip to Minnesota and I am another year older. I will post more on that this week and also highlight a few other things we did this month. I've been out of it, sorry.



Tonight, I made gumbo for dinner. You can find my delicious recipe for this dish here. As you can see from these photos, I obviously cheated by purchasing Roux in a jar. It is pretty good, but darker than I usually make it. I've used about half of the jar already. I recommend using as little as possible if you are going to use jarred Roux. Its much darker than the caramel color I prefer. Cajun roux is usually darker and creole roux is usually lighter in color (resulting from more or less cooking).



After my last post about making gumbo, Fr. RB sent me some File in a bottle, you can see it in the photo. It actually came in the mail the day Clark, our baby Gumbo, was born. It was funny because Andrea walked into the room and said, "Hey, you got a package! Want to open it for some motivation." I think I was nearing the pushing stage, or in it, and NO, I did not want to open some mail while I was hard at work in LABOR! I opened it a few days later.



This gumbo is a seafood gumbo, made with crawfish, crawfish stock and some vegan shrimp that my best friend, Liz, bought for me. I still can't eat shrimp for Clark's sake, but did go to All you can eat shrimp @ Red Lobster for my birthday. I had to throw my milk away and there was a mild amount of spitup, but we all survived it.