Welaka Walkn' Sandhills

By the time Emma and I made it to the Welaka Fish Hatchery last week, we were almost as happy to see the restrooms as the fish in the tanks.
As we piled out of the JEEP and headed for the banio, a pair of sandhill cranes strolled around the corner.
They stopped.
We stopped.
As much as I was looking forward to that clean, public option restroom, I had to zip back to the JEEP and grab the camera.

I figured these cranes were pretty accustomed to people, so I walked slowly towards them until they finally took notice of my proximity.
The cranes began to move away slowly and I was able to capture a few megapixies of them share with you.

Emma was sorta hohum about these since she has to literally walk around sidewalk standing sandhills on the University of South Florida campus at times. How cool is that?

It's been a busy week here in Pure Florida ... as you can tell by a missed daily post or two.

My soccer girls are improving. We made the dreaded cuts last week, keeping 19 when we were supposed to be keeping 16 ... out of 27 tryouts.

I have a super co-coach who not only is showing me the ropes of coaching soccer, but is an amazing fundraiser in the local, tiny, poor community.

It looks like we will have real uniforms and not Sharpie Marker scrawled numbers on a T-shirt like our poor track team had last year. Our first match is November 6 against a hoitytoity private school, and vandals have damaged one of our goal frames, so we are feeling the time/money stress, but we will make it.

My brainy High Q team won both matches last week ... actually left the other team in smoking ruins, so that was a feather in their bonnet.

(They don't really wear bonnets ... they're nerds, but they have some sense of fashion)

Last night's football game was pretty depressing for a while and did not end well for us, but at the end we could hold our heads up.

At the end of the first half, we were down 0 -47 and could not seem to do anything right. In the second half, we came back hard, but not enough to win.

Final score was 24-47, and Junior made two of those touchdowns including a 60+ yard pass into the goal.

If only we had fired it up a little earlier!

Junior has two more football games left and then he will switch to basketball.

Last week he was in Indianapolis at the National FFA convention. He flew home Thursday night. This morning he is taking the ACT for the 3rd time, trying to get one more point higher on his score so he can be eligible for a full scholarship.

What a schedule that kid has.

Emma came home for the weekend to visit and work on a big paper. She entered a pumpkin carving contest at her apartment and won 4 tickets to HallowScream at Bush Gardens. She was pretty stoked about that.

When she wakes up this morning, I am driving her back to Tampa. Perhaps I will find a little something ... some park, or out of the way spot to bring back a story for you.

Right now, Bear is whining that I should take him out. It's raining lightly and I am delaying, but he says the rain doesn't bother him.

I'd better go get wet ... before the floor does.