Miami Part 2: Green is Not a Fall Color

Watching the news this morning, we saw that snow was expected back home. Meanwhile, we have been dealing with temperatures in the 80s and high humidity making it feel like we are still in the heat of summer. The conference and training that I was attending ended earlier this week, so it is vacation time from here until we go back. We went to Fairchild Tropical Gardens yesterday and walked around the grounds. The mugginess of a tropical garden made it feel like a sauna - hence my flushed face in the pictures. It seems we will miss out on the Fall colors this year since Miami is sub-tropical and the trees here are evergreen. Oh well, it's pretty anyway. Here's Tanja in an area of the gardens that they use for weddings.


Karina enjoyed wandering around - at least until the end when she decided she was hot and tired just like us. Here she is being cute and giggly,



They had several Halloween decorations that were all made from organic garden materials. These ghosts were made from the base of fallen palm leaves.


After the sweet potatoes, Karina moved on to avocados. She had a hard time gripping them and moving them into her mouth. She did manage to squeeze them between her fingers and then suck on her fingers for a while. Then she would smear her hands on the tray and gather more avocado to eat. Of course, she seems like she might have wound up with more avocado on her outfit, on her face, in her hair, on her elbow, etc. than she did in her mouth.



We learned our lesson the next night and she ate her avocado wearing nothing but a bib and her diaper (we use the Miami weather to our advantage where we can). It made it easy to put her in the bath immediately after.


Mormor and Morfar are quite excited to have Karina visiting and they have been a big help taking her and keeping her entertained.