Last weekend P&I spent a whirlwind weekend in Florida! It was a 12 hour drive one-way... Oofta. We left home on Thursday night and returned back home early Monday morning (3am!) in time for work at 7am! :) The weekend was packed full, but we had a great time, made some new friends, and best of all we completed our advanced open water scuba certification!! Our diving was all done in some of Florida's freshwater springs - so refreshing! 73 degrees, consistently!
Here we are before our first dive... still warm. :)
Ready to dive!
Most of our certification was done in caverns. It was quite an experience! We both enjoyed it immensely although I was a bit more timid than Peter. The following photo is borrowed from one of our dive mates, Jay. Thanks Jay!
After the first dive, feeling a little queasy and cold, but happy!
Ginnie Springs, FL was our first dive site; we completed five dives here. :)
Isn't it beautiful?!
After Ginnie Springs, we went to Blue Grotto, another neat dive site! We didn't take any photos there unfortunately, but we completed two dives and then hopped onto the road for the long drive home!
Some of the Brown's were asking about what our diving was like so Peter wrote an email that I thought I'd share:
"How does it look and feel to be that deep... Good question.
In the Caribbean, you might have 100+ feet of visibility, so you can see all the way to the surface and it's pretty bright down at depth. You'll notice the shorter wavelength colors start to quickly filter out as you go deeper (reds first, quickly followed by orange and yellows). Green, blue, indigo and violet remain the longest. Imagine looking through a big blue filter - that gets bigger as you go deeper. Cool little science project
here about it. While the process is of colors interesting, it is all VERY pretty and you (or at least me) rarely notice the change.
In the caverns in Florida, we had very good visibility - probably almost as good as the Caribbean since it is fresh water and has less particulates (other than some silt divers had kicked up off the bottom). Colors get filtered out the same as salt water, but being in a cavern adds the element of darkness - somewhat mitigated by your flashlight (I have a good one). :-) Oddly enough, the darkness didn't bother me much (maybe Marissa a bit more than me). One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was being back in the Blue Grotto cavern and being slightly negatively buoyant as I descended the shaft just flicking a fin left and right occasionally to dodge the limestone boulders as I went deeper. VERY serene and exciting at the same time. While not as much plant and animal life to look at, the freshwater dives were still very interesting.
Back to the feeling... Once you are comfortable with your gear and have your buoyancy dialed in, you feel kind of like this weightless foreign observer looking into another planet's world (and you really are). I think it feels more like your own world too as you get more bottom time.
We aren't fast divers. We dive slowly and try to concentrate on the small things in front of us, the nooks and crannies, and the dark corners. Marissa is really good at noticing all the different sea life. A lot of the fun in diving is finding something neat and pointing it out to your dive buddies. (This almost never happens to me - the finding part - in fact, I think if I DID see something really cool I would keep it to myself and not tell anyone until we got back to the shore - 'cuz I'm kinda jealous of everyone else. It hasn't happened yet, so I'm not sure what I would do...) It doesn't take much skill to see a whale shark (although still very exciting), but to notice a little sea horse, frog fish, eel, or octopus takes good eyes and attention. You won't see them if you're moving very quickly. Even in fresh water, it is amazing how much there is to see if you are willing to pause and watch for a while. Night dives have even more activity! Float and watch - a LOT more fun than it may sound... Try a resort dive sometime and see for yourself. :-)"
I should have him write this blog!! He's far more entertaining than I am. :)
Aren't they fun?! Hope you have a LOVE-ly Valentines Day!! 
Ready to dive!
Most of our certification was done in caverns. It was quite an experience! We both enjoyed it immensely although I was a bit more timid than Peter. The following photo is borrowed from one of our dive mates, Jay. Thanks Jay!
After the first dive, feeling a little queasy and cold, but happy!
Ginnie Springs, FL was our first dive site; we completed five dives here. :)
Isn't it beautiful?!
After Ginnie Springs, we went to Blue Grotto, another neat dive site! We didn't take any photos there unfortunately, but we completed two dives and then hopped onto the road for the long drive home! 
The new bathtub area was framed in~
The exterior side of this wall got the drywall patched~
The floor started being laid~ (and it is breathtakingly beautiful!)
Plumbing was roughed in ~
Flooring was finished!
And the shower (to the left in this photo) was framed in.
Isn't it amazing!? :) Isn't my HUSBAND amazing?! That's ALL his handy-work!
Usn's
The all-famous "Grave-Digger"
T'was a fun, LOUD evening!
And finally... our last BIG project is underway!! Here are a few BEFORE pictures - please excuse the very messy counters. I promise when we have a nice, pretty, new bathroom I will keep it tidier. :) 
Left side view from entry door: (WHY would you put shutters above the tub??)
View from the corner of the tub:
The privy:
View from the bedroom... again WHY shutters??
Shutters... GONE! The first big improvement! :) This will be a solid wall eventually and the vanity will be on this wall instead of the tub. Make sense?
Tub's out!
Inspector Dozer checkin' things out. 
Another wall bites the dust! The shower will be extended into this wall space giving us about an extra 12" of shower space!
Shower's gone! Tile's gone!
Vanity's out!
Toilet's gone!
Linoleum (which was under the tile) is up~
New sliding door is installed! This will hugely help with space since we won't have to worry about the swing radius. 
That brings you up to speed! We have a beautiful corner jacuzzi tub sitting in the garage right now and the AMAZING vanity is supposed to be delivered on Tuesday!!!!! :)
Sweet Lizzy~
Opening our presents!
K's contribution to my stocking. :)
Mom sent me a cinnamon roll recipe, which I baked for dessert...
...as if we didn't already have enough food!! Can you believe there were only four of us?! Oink, Oink.
Okay, we just might have over-done it with the eats... but isn't that what the Holidays are for? :) 
...Mmm... Certain to cause cavities AND clog your arteries. :)
Frostin' the cinnies!
Finished product. It took 5 days to polish off that pan, but we sure did it! :) 
After meeting on Sunday we went down to some new friends, J&S and kiddos with K&L to play some games... and eat some more! Isn't it interesting (or maybe sad?) that all of our good memories revolve around food??! 
- While the boys played a board game called 'Epidemic'. -
All in all, it was a perfect Holiday weekend. Going back to the real world on Monday was a bit difficult, but now we're looking forward to family visits this year (hopefully, hint hint!) and another tropical scuba vacation with K&L mid-year. Happy 2011 to YOU!
