Torgerson Family Adventures

 Two and a half weeks ago, I did what every good worn out mother does, left my husband and children to fend for themselves and hit the beaches of Florida.

It was a fabulous *mostly* girls trip with Daniels parents and all of his sisters.

We flew into Tampa and stayed the first couple of nights in Clearwater beach, on the beach.  The harbor view from our room (open ocean on other side):

 The crew on the pier.

 We were watching a the ocean wildlife.

A pirate ship- some sort of entertainment for the kids.

The dark blob in the water is one of a group of sting ray we saw on the pier about 100 yards or so from where we were swimming. Yikes!  We know it was a sting ray because the college kids swimming right on top of them went under with goggles and came back up screaming.

The first full day of being there we rented chairs and set up a spot on the beach and we would go from the water to the warmth for a snack  and back to the water.  I was sitting on the beach with Alynn and heard, "Oh my gosh!  I just saw something.... like... a fish!".  I was thinking ok, we've been seeing little fish all day when I looked up and saw where she was pointing and saw the fin out of water just behind where the rest of our group was swimming.  We both kinda freaked out not knowing whether it was a shark or dolphin or what?!?!
My body wanted to start screaming, "shark! shark!" but I kept control and we realized with was a dolphin by the way he was swimming and what others were saying :)
Every time I tried to take a picture of it, he would go under and not come back up.  The closest I got was a splash.

We got a little adventurous and went para sailing.  Because we had such a large group they gave us a discount of the longest length of rope so we went all out.

Teresa and I up in the air.

A Clearwater beach sunset.

Here I am the morning we left Clearwater.  It was a pretty cold day and we didn't do a whole lot of swimming.