Does anyone else feel like I hardly blog? It's not that we aren't doing much, but without birthdays I have no urgency to write them. I also have just not been taking a lot of pictures- by my standards anyway. So anyway, if it feels like I disappeared for awhile, no worries, we're still here!
If you've read my blogs lately, you know we're on a mission this year to experience things in Florida that we never have before. We've been working on things around Tampa, and hopefully we'll broaden out to the panhandle, the east coast, and the south before the year is over- although that proves to be more expensive, and we have to worry about what to do with Ellie, so we'll see how that all works out.
We actually have a two parter weekend. The weather was bad on Wednesday, and we had some first time plans for this upcoming weekend- plus celebrating Leap Day (because yes, that's a thing)- so we have two 'Florida Weekends' in a row.
We start this one at Tarpon Springs. It's about a half hour drive from our house. We hardly ever head west, unless we're going to Honeymoon Island, so this whole area is pretty new to us.
The main draw of Tarpon Springs is the sponge docks. In the late 1800's people flocked to Tarpon Springs to get in on the harvesting and processing of sponges. When diving for sponges became a thing, Greeks were recruited to help- and today there's a large Greek population. Today, you visit Tarpon Springs as much for the sponges, as for the greek food.
We went to lunch at one of the most popular Greek restaurants, Hellas.
When sponges became less plentiful in the area, a lot of people turned to shrimping, so seafood is also pretty popular. Peyton went the seafood route with shrimp, and Calib went greek with a chicken pita.
Asa and I split a gyro, and it was probably the best I ever had. It was also gigantic, so sharing it was no problem.
Besides that, we wanted to save room for dessert. Right next door to the restaurant is Hellas bakery. It's just case after case of desserts.
We opted for some baklava, and Asa got a greek coffee.
I don't know what makes it greek coffee, and it was good- until you got to the bottom, then it's a weird sludge of a caffeine overdose. But the baklava was awesome.
Along Dodecanese Blvd, there's tons of shops with sponges and touristy items. It kind of reminded me of a small cruise ship port. We walked along and window shopped. One lady was extra talkative, and when she found out about our Florida weekends, and that this was our very first time at the sponge docks, she was so excited, gave us a map- told us where to go, and gave the boys some turtles made from shells. So, thank you random nice lady/shop owner!
There's also an area where the boats come and go, you can even take dolphin cruises and the likes. They're a little pricey, but I would totally do it sometime. It seems like something you have to do at least once.
At the very end of the street there's also a museum/gift shop with a video you can watch on the history of sponge diving in Tarpon Springs.
We did buy a sponge to bring home. Maybe next time I'll get a loofa!
The nice lady at the gift shop told us about this park where you can often find manatees. It was a few miles away, a little too far to walk, but we found parking pretty easy (although we were pretty surprised how busy the whole place was for mid-day on a Monday!)
We sat along the water, and we actually did see some manatee noses and some tail fins.
There was also a bit of tree climbing, mostly by Asa.
Tuesday we headed out to Hillsborough state park. It took a little over half an hour to get there. Ellie got to come along, and she was pretty excited about it.
There's a bunch of different trails, we took one of the easy ones. We weren't really sure how Ellie would do on an outing like this, so we tried to keep it pretty low key for her. She tends to get very overwhelmed when she's out and about.
We followed the trail down to the river...
...and Peyton, Asa, and I decided to climb down. I love a good river/rock climbing.
This has Peyton written all over it. He was down climbing all around every chance he got. It's not like it was hard or anything- paths and clearly been carved out.
And eventually we found a good place for Hayden to climb down too.
Calib, however, was a little freaked out at the prospect of Ellie trying to get down to the river. But, she was determined. I didn't have her pegged as an adventurous pup, but she was all about it.
We had a good time on the trails. The park also has canoe and bike rentals, along with a pool, although it was too cold to be opened. We decided camping here could be fun- and we'll be back for sure.
We also went out to dinner at Vallartas. It's a mexican place right across the street from our subdivision. They have $1 tacos every Tuesday and Wednesday- we pass the sign by it all the time, but we'd never been. Fun side note, they also had half price margaritas for happy hour. Asa might have gotten one that was a little too big.
The $1 tacos are actually pretty good, They aren't amazing, but they're $1, so you do have to taper your expectations. Their prices for everything else seemed pretty good, so I'd probably go back even if not for the $1 tacos. There were only two people working when we were there, although it was sort of off hours, and the service was good. Plus the chips were warm and the salsa was homemade.
Since Asa is working later these days, we can finally do some things on the weekend, as long as he's back to clock in at 1. So, we can finally go to Fresh Markets at Wiregrass again. The only kid in for getting up early though was Peyton. He was pleased though, because that meant he didn't have to share his Whatever Pop with anyone. We got a doggie Whatever Pop for Ellie, but she wasn't all that interested. (They're only $1.50, so I was willing to spring for it).
We also finally tried Riddle on the Griddle! It's a popular food truck (it started out as a stand- and is now a trailer), that makes the craziest grilled cheese sandwiches, and while Asa had eaten there before, I hadn't had the pleasure. And let me tell you, it was delicious. And filling. Half of a sandwich was plenty.
Asa also picked up a few new herbs and was home in time to plant them. Check out our papaya tree! We need to buy a house stat, so it can finally go into the ground.
And shout out to Zack for giving us the chocolate mint plant! Thanks for thinking of us!
It's worth noting, Survivor game back, so we had to have Sur-fry-vor night. We will have to make our winner predictions soon. I'd like to do it after the first episode, but it's hard to remember everyone's names until episode three or four.
On the home school front, we've kicked off the Candy Bar Election. This week we drew for states. It was a big undertaking to randomly draw names, but give bigger states to more people, and keep families together AND try and give the smaller caucus states to families. Because, lets face it caucuses would be more fun as a family!
After we drew names, I had to sort everything out. It was a little nuts.
We will be representing Georgia. Every sheet has this info sheet that I made myself to keep track of everything.
And Asa, being an awesome husband, cleaned off all the clips so we could get a Decision 2016 board going.
Last night we did our first newscast. I posted the video on the Facebook page. But, you guys should really see the outake videos, because they are HILARIOUS. The boys were having a really hard time making it through without laughing hysterically.
We have been celebrating a few birthdays too. I know I posted about Charles Darwin's birthday last time around...
..but we've been working on some Evolution lapbooks.
We also had a Pixar short film festival to celebrate Steve Jobs...
And we did the president in 60 seconds, and a pop quiz along with cherry pie for George Washington.
We also had a good time this last week hanging out with some other home school kids. We were invited to hang out with some friends of friends who live on a super large property with all kinds of fun things to do. The kids played manhunt, had pizza, and couldn't get enough of the zipline.
I leave you with a few random pictures of the week. (Hayden's in the laundry baskets).
Next Up: Leap Day, Super Tuesday, and Harry Potter!
