My week in Florida went by way too quickly. I haven't even been home for 24 hours and I'm already missing my family and the warm/sunny weather. While I was there I tried to balance my time with family and photography. I used my time during the day exploring local parks and looking for wildlife to photograph and was amazed by how much wildlife I was finding. Then I spent the evenings hanging out with the family. Once I came home a little later than I originally said, but the remainder of the nights I wound up coming in earlier than expected. 

On Saturday the family and some friends joined me at a local park for roughly 3 1/2 hours. We enjoyed a picnic lunch, the kids played and then I showed them around the park. We saw gators, a black racer who was going after a frog, two great horned owls and a barred owl. Then on Sunday I spent the whole day with the family at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. 

During the evenings I helped my sister a little with dinner and cleanup, but mostly I used that time to hang out with the kids. We played card games, put puzzles together, watched kid tv, colored, I photographed them swimming (also taking action shots of them jumping I'm), made smores by the fire pit and enjoyed time snuggling. It was really fun spending time with the kids and hard to say good bye. One night my sister and I got slightly tipsy together and had a grand old time. It was a really good week.

Here are the two adorable kids who kept me well entertained every night (my niece and nephew)! I took this shot at the very end of our day at Homosassa Springs while we were walking the tram trail back to the parking lot! As you can see, even after a long day of walking around the park in the hot sun, these kids still had lots of energy to burn! I'm already missing these two little love bugs!