It is Monday morning and we are busy packing because in 2 days we move to MS. It is crazy around here...so much more to do than I realized! I am so overwhelmed and exauhsted...but we will get it all done and on Wednesday night we will arrive in MS to finally be done with traveling for a while! Today I have to go through the girls play room at my moms house that has old toys of theirs in it. Then this evening I need to go to target to get our entertainment center, book shelves, and maybe dinning room table. Then I have to go to another store and try to pick up bunk beds for the girls. I also need to go to my brothers to pick up a couch and our TV that they have been borrowing while we were gone. On Tuesday we will rent the moving van, load it and get ready to head out on Wednesday morning bright and early! WHEW...I am tired just thinking about it all! YIKES!!!

Anyway...that isn't why I came here to post. We had an AWESOME weekend! Friday night we headed out to Crystal River, FL to spend a weekend SCUBA diving and snorkeling. Saturday morning we headed out in the boat and got in a few dives. Unfortunately it was the first time I used my gear in quite a few years and I had some difficulties...grrrr and I wasn't able to really get down. To top it off it was also very low tide and the visibitlity was extremely low. We didn't let it stop our fun though, we had a GREAT time in the boat and in the water! We saw a beautiful sunset on the water and then headed in for the night.

We met up with some of my Dad's friends Saturday night and had a yummy pot luck style dinner. After dinner Clark helped clean up while I took the girls to the room to get baths and then put them to bed because we had an EARLY morning on Sunday.

We woke up at 5:30 and started getting ready to head out to the boat! We took a tour boat out to 3 sisters springs with 25 others to take an early morning snorkel with the manatees. We had a little bit of a rough start but once we all had our wet suites on the boat we pulled them on (and let me tell you, they were COLD because they hadn't dried out yet)! Misa was such a trouper...she put that cold wet suite on, jumped right in the water and swam off to the manatees that she saw! She was SOO excited! Unfortunately we forgot the underwater digital camera, but we are getting a video of the dive on DVD really soon, so maybe I can find a way to post that!

The springs were swarmed with Manatee! I saw at least 12 if not more and I know there were a lot more that I didn't see! We kind of hung out in the water in our best deadmans float and waited for them to come swimming up! We would hold out one hand and wiggle our fingers and in no time at all the huge manatees would swim right up to us, roll over on there back and want a belly rub! It was AWESOME!

It was COLD on the boat, but once we got in the water it wasn't bad at all. Melisa made it about 15 or 20 minutes in the water before she just couldn't take the cold anymore and she headed in to get out of the wet clothes and into her sweats. Clark, Dad, TJ and I stayed in the water a lot longer snorkeling around and petting the manatees! Cali was a trouper and hung out in the boat like a little angel! She would wave at us and blow us kisses! I was VERY proud of how well both of my girls did! Melisa is already talking about trying to do it again next year! :-)

Manatees gave been my favorite water animal for YEARS and I was SO excited to get to share it with Melisa. She announced to me on the drive home that Manatees are now her favorite water animal too! It was so much fun to share that with her!