February

I'm over a month late, again. But look at it this way: to keep up with our lives, you only have to read 12 blog posts a year! What a deal.

Alright, alright, enough with the silliness. (Once more, I promise that I really will keep trying to update the blog frequently.) Here's our February:

On February 5th, we ended a one-month-long weight competition with Tanner's family. On the day we ended the competition, I was the skinniest I have been in years! Tanner hit a long-time low as well. We couldn't have been more proud of ourselves! I think the competition really motivated us to push ourselves as hard as we could. We learned a lot, the number one thing being that we can do it--it just takes work--but that weight loss is possible.

Then this last week, we celebrated Valentine's Day and our anniversary, and my mom came to visit. It was busy! On Valentine's Day, we went to a stake dinner and dance (we always go for the free stuff). It was such an experience! We got there when it started at 7:30, and wondered if we were in the right place, because there was only one other car in the parking lot. Tanner went inside to check, and it turns out we were the first to arrive in an extreme case of Mormon standard time. The other car there was the couple in the stake presidency who had set up the event. We chatted with them and one other couple that arrived at the same time as us, who actually served as mission presidents in my first mission, Belo Horizonte, so that was really neat.

Eventually people started coming, and two couples we knew sat with us--we were one of two English speaking tables in the whole cultural hall, and even then, half of our table didn't speak English. The man who had served as a mission president shared a message in Portu-spanish, and I translated for Tanner and our friends. Then the counselor in the stake presidency (who is Cuban) sang us Spanish songs while we ate our meal, and finally, we salsa danced. I had not expected everything to be so Latino, but maybe I should have! It makes sense when eight of the ten wards in our branch are Spanish speaking. It was fun.

My mom came that Monday. She watched Ezra while Tanner and I had a candlelit anniversary dinner on the beach (on a bench about 20 feet from the water), and we had a wonderful couple of days together. We went to the Deering Estate, went on a airboat tour to see the alligators, and ate at an authentic Caribbean restaurant. Ezra and my mom loved spending time together.

Here are the pictures:

These are from the Deering Estate, the place Tanner and I went to in January. It was so beautiful and peaceful that I had to take my mom!

And these are from our crocodile tour in the Everglades:

We had frog legs for lunch! In my opinion, they were pretty gross, but Tanner and my mom liked them.

We stopped at the new Fort Lauderdale Temple on the way home. It was beautiful! We can't wait until we can volunteer for the open house in April.

And lastly:

One picture from Greynolds park, another raccoon. They are everywhere around here!

A picture of our fried crab at the Caribbean restaurant. Weird! 

 And, of course, Ezra being cute, as always!