Florida vacation, family visit, the May two-four

Today is Victoria Day, a holiday in Canada celebrating the Queen's birthday (May 24). Around here it is also known as "May long," as in the May long weekend, or the May two-four, as in May 24 or the weekend in May when you buy a 24-pack of beer. We are going to barbecue with friends tonight, and are enjoying having a holiday weekend just after getting back from vacation.

Florida was great. We swam in the warm clear water in the Gulf, kayaked through mangrove tunnels, saw dolphins, lounged on the beach, searched for shells, ate good Mexican, went out for ice cream at two different local shops, and generally had a lovely time.

Lounging by the pool

The view from the balcony in our room

Jeff drinking a Miami Vice atop the Lani Kai (especially for Meredith)

Enjoying a walk on the beach

 Jeff has videos of dolphins, kayaking, and a tortoise chomping on some grass, but these need some editing and so I will have to post them later.

We got back on Monday evening, and on Friday morning Jeff's sister, her partner, and their daughter arrived for a three-day visit. We relaxed, had a chance to visit, ate good things including homemade strawberry ice cream (which needs perfecting – the strawberries were rather icy) and homemade rhubarb pie, went to parks, and went to the Science Center.

Maddy was stressed but surprisingly tolerant

All together at the Science Center

We had a lovely time, and were sad to see them go this morning, but look forward to future visits when we will have a cousin for the little one to play with :-)

Finally, just before we left for Florida we had our anatomy scan ultrasound. Last week we had an appointment with our OB, and she said that everything looks perfect. She also went over the results of some previous screening testing that we had done, and everything looks excellent – the risks of serious birth defects and complications are much lower than in the general population according to our results. It is always nice to get reassurance that everything is going well, especially when we have had a bit of a difficult time getting to where we are! 

I had hoped that there would be good images from the ultrasound, as there often are at this stage. However, the baby was not being very cooperative in terms of position, so getting images was difficult, but here is a cute one: