Our Last Free Flights

By the time Mark was out of school for his summer break, we had 2 weeks left to fly for free. We crammed in as much as we could before the flight benefits ended. This is what we were able to do before all the flying fun was over:

We got to watch Emilee graduate from the University of Utah. Yay for Emilee! We are so proud of her!


After Emilee's graduation, we went to dinner to celebrate.

It was really fun but became even more worth it when I saw the biggest burger I have ever seen. Cory was obviously happy with what he ordered.

On Mother's Day we got to eat two great dinners a couple hours apart with my mom and the Caldwell side...


And Mark's mom and the Baker side.
Risa made these aprons for all the girls. Aren't they cute?!

After Mother's Day, my parents flew back to Florida to spend the week with us. On the first day, we went to Kennedy Space Center. This was one of my favorites because we learned so many things!


We got to feel like real astronauts...

See real astronaut space ships...




Meet real astronauts...well almost...

And my Dad and Mark got to take a ride on the moon!

Pretty great trip if you ask me.

To finish this section off, I posted a picture of my parents touching the same moon rock. How romantic. :)

Our next stop was the Everglades. We saw baby alligators, big alligators, turtles, lizards, fish and birds.


Here's Mark with a turtle. (If you can find it)

These are of me, my dad, and mom with the alligators that were swimming.



This alligator was my favorite because its stomach was so huge. Either this alligator ordered what Cory did or it had to have been pregnant.

We thought this bird was pretty cool. You could tell it was getting nervous when the alligators swam by. It finally decided to fly away and Mark got it on camera. Good job Mark!

We were lucky because we got to the park during dinner time. The alligators were snapping all over the place. Each time one would snap you could see a group of fish scatter everywhere. Hopefully you can still see the alligators since this video is such poor quality.

The next day we went to Key Biscayne near Miami. It was really fun because we could go out pretty far and only have the water up to our knees. My mom and Mark spent most of their time snorkeling.


On the last day, we drove down to Key Largo. We got there just in time to take the last glass bottom boat ride. We saw tons of parrot fish, a turtle, a shark, and on our way back a couple of dolphins.

The ride out there was one of the best parts. We were bouncing all over the place because the water was really choppy. I was loving standing at the front of the boat and flying around until we splashed way down into the water and I got soaking wet. My hair tells the whole story in this next picture.

The ride was fun but I think what topped it off was listening to 60s beach music that was playing and then looking over at my dad's crazy hair while the wind was blowing it. He looked just like "the Fonz" from the "Happy Days". See a resemblance?

Unfortunately because it was so windy people starting getting sick from the rocking. My dad actually ended up throwing up because of this. As you can see my dad's got his sick face on while he's holding up his barf bag and a peppermint in this next picture. I was a little jealous when I came up to the top of the boat and saw they were giving everyone free peppermints. Of course I acted like I was sick too so I could get one.

After dinner in Key Largo, we went to see the original boat from the 1950's movie "African Queen". I think this was the only thing that could have inspired Mark and I to watch this movie after. It was pretty cheesy but at least I still felt special that I had seen the actual boat that was in the movie.



Our vacation was so fun that when it was over I was a little disappointed because it made the airport job that much sadder that it was coming to an end. Oh well, all good things come to an end, right?