and then summer began if 'june know what i mean'

summer for everyone! well, as far as the weather is concerned! and by the way, i made a mistake. the trip to mississippi actually happened in june-the first week...uf. that's why one should record their blog posts as soon as they happen!

the weekend before i headed to ms, we took advantage of the beautiful day to try a new donut shop-5-0...crime scene! it was interesting, but not good enough to trump AMI donuts or the farmhouse, or peacheys (which i was thinking about just this morning...but good thing they are away up north for the summer!).

i didn't like the actual donuts more than others i'd been to, but a quick fix if you're in this part of town!

kind of a fun staging area! 

 so we tried them, then went to check out jungle gardens! there were some animals in cages, i felt bad for the reptiles and felt the animals could've had a better ambiance, but the highlight of course was the flamingos! just hanging out, doing their thing. a sign was up, letting us know that they might be aggressive as it was breeding season. i may be the only one that didn't get bitten. they were beautiful, though! just not very hungry; we were thinking that perhaps they come out and actually feed them shrimp in the mornings, and the crappy-feed from visitors was merely a 'treat' but not a really good treat...more like feeding me a piece of seaweed paper when i really want doritos.. it's amazing the things you see and hear when you observe other visitors. again with the little kids...they were jerks. i'm blaming parents on this one, because most kids are not innately cruel to animals, they are just selfish and think they are the center of the universe. parents, please don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...or jerks.

a bunch of the flamingos milling around

this one lone flamingo took off and got away from all the others (like he was on an energy drink or something), and he ended up in a completely different area of the park-here he is acting like a giraffe!

the same flamingo from the above pic, he moved even further from the trip and toward the kiddie park in the sandbox!

the verdict is out-a little pricey for petting flamingos, but if that's something you're just dying to do, it's as good a place as any to do it. plus they do have picture times with the baby alligators, and parrots. one of the cool things for us was that someone randomly called out to shea, and we were thinking IMG employee, but no, it was one of her close friends from oklahoma middle school(?) who visits family in sarasota annually! good times!

and actually the same night i returned, another kamp friend was flying in with her toddlers! merce stayed with shea, and they flew into tampa, i flew into sarasota. but we did get together the following evening for dinner! saturday we made it out to myakka and again saw some baby gators, but the water was much higher than the previous visit, so they weren't just laying out on the banks (of the hanky-panky where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky..) anyhoo. we did some muddy hiking with the kiddos, and one of shea's co-workers and her children. good times! we sloshed through some muddy/watery parts of the trail, but knew that it was just a bit further to the end of the loop that led to the parking lot!

sunday was our last hang-out day, so we headed out to AMI and did donuts and a beautiful beach day! there was some boogie-boarding, some treasure hunting...and just instilling the general love of ocean in the babes!

fun floating and looking for waves-of which there really weren't any big 'uns!

the following day i was off to broward for a little training on our spanish product, and it was pretty exciting! a good crowd! and then the following week i drove up to orange county-the orlando area to support our pki/implementation/sales team as one of our sales reps has the unique opportunity to go overseas to begium to teach! while we're excited for him, it's always a chore to get the 'just right candidaes' to meet the needs here in florida!

then about 2 weeks later it would be time to head off to dallas for our summer conference 2018...but just a couple more tidbits before the trip!

great start to a 'booming' week!
julie