Happy 4th Of July!

We had some fun visiting family down in Miami and the cops were only called to the house once...
My cousin Kim and her husband Willy held a pool party for the family, and they put on a neat fireworks show a little later.

Yeah, with all of the fireworks they lit off, it's a good thing the lake is close by...

And, this is the only photo I got of something exploding in the sky, mainly because...

...the favorite thing to set off were flares. Apparently, one of their visitors had access to a bunch of expired safety flares and there were a bunch of them.

Yeah, those things were bright and they burned for a while.

And going inside the house didn't help too much either. It didn't take long before somebody called the cops, whom showed up at the front door. Basically, they wanted to talk to Willy (and they wouldn't let me take pictures or I would show you) to tell him that the aerial safety flares were just a bit over the top and he should stop shooting them off. Other then that, they were fine with the rest of the activities, so the fireworks show continued.

Meanwhile, I did a little slide show on my laptop computer of some pictures I had scanned while I was in Arizona. They were mostly of when we were kids and had spent our Easter Sundays at our grandparent's house.

During our visit, we took the opportunity to do some geocaching too. This one is at a Cracker Barrel where Katrina is teaching her cousin Kylor about an "OYR" type of hide (Off Your Rocker).

Apparently, Kylor has put on some weight since the last time he curled up in his mother's lap...

After the find at Cracker Barrel, Captain Biggins met up with us and we found a neat cache that moves around on this guardrail.

So, everybody got a chance to 'find' it and to move it down the rail.

We also stopped on the Alligator Alley and got some great photos.

We found that this geocache was placed inside a turtle shell, and needed a 'tune-up'. We added a camoflauged container to the shell to aid with its concealment.

After we made it into the Miami area, we stopped off at this park near the legendary Vizcaya...

...and found this micro nearby the wall we were standing on.

After I showed Katrina how to climb a coconut tree, she decided to have a go at it, so I'm holding her feet into position on the tree. Are we having fun yet?

When we were searching for the geocache, I discoved this red rat snake in a crevice.

And here is a picture of Luann taking the previous picture.

We even tried our hand at an "Artsy-Fartsy" photo shoot too (we took the coconut home afterwards).

Karen wanted some pictures of this gate so she could do a painting of it later. Hope this is what she was wanting...

The mosaics on each side were cool.

When we stopped at this cache location, I saw this fairly good-sized brown lizard looking at me, so I decided to take his picture. If you click on the picture, it will show you a larger view with a red circle placed aroung th elizard's head so you can see it.

The next thing I knew, the lizard started jumping rail-to-rail and crossed right in front of my face, then ran down to the left of me to catch (and eat) a big bug.

Here is the close-up shot that I wanted to get of "Mr. Bold", after he finished gulping down the bug...

We stopped by a park with a pond that I used to hang out out when I was a teenager and wouldn't you know it, there's a geocache here. We thought these ducklings looked cute.

And I mean, they are real cute...

Peekaboo! I see you too!

Huh? Why is this one sideways?

Duh... I Founded It!

On our return trip, we stopped off for one more cache beofre giving up. We just need to figure out how to get to it with the "Cache-Guardian" watching us.

Actually, it turns out the container located just outside of the pasture, so it wasn't such a big deal. Pictured is Katrina, Kylor, and Colton, with Brendon in the back.

Well, this ends our geocaching session for the 4th of July weekend... No Bull!