Free Miami!

In the last couple of weeks, Fiona and I have been out and about in Miami with my friend Jen and her three kids. She is such a wonderful friend and we always have a great time together. She has three kids ages 3 and under! I don't know how she does it but she makes it look like she's Wonder Woman. :) She is also incredibly savvy about deals and ways to save since she is a stay-at-home mom too. Saving money becomes a second job. Miami-Dade does a program with their county's libraries where you can check out passes for 4 to different places around the county, mostly in the city of Miami.

First we went to the Miami Children's Museum. It was adorable and so fun. It was Jen's middle child, Caleb's 2nd birthday. We celebrated with the museum visit and cupcakes! When Fiona gets older, I can't wait to take her again when she can appreciate it. Since Jen had the passes, we all got to go for free! There were some fun little things to do. One that I thought was particularly funny was that they had a Publix grocery store the right size for kids. They had kid size grocery carts, baskets, plastic food, registers, and checkout lanes. Adorable! Everyone got to go shopping.

The next week, we went to Deering Estate, also in Miami. We used another free pass from the library. It's a beautiful home built in the late 1896 by a wealthy man (James Deering) and his family as their summer home. Now, the city owns it and keeps it up for tourists. It sits right on the water and has extensive, gorgeous grounds which they also keep up very well. We walked around, looked at the house, ate lunch on a picnic table on the grounds, then walked around the dock to look in the water at the fish. Jen spent a year in college as a Marine Biology major and therefore knows so much more about sea life than I do. (I know nothing. The ocean scares me half the time. haha!) Her kids were very curious about the fish in the water. We had a good time running around on the hot but nice day.

Next week, I think she is going to check out a pass to Vizcaya! It's a popular tourist site in Miami that I am looking forward to. It's a museum and gardens also built by James Deering. (He was an avid gardener and amateur botanist/horticulturalist.) It supposed to be really beautiful. Jessica, my sister, and her husband, Adam, went there one time during a visit with us. I think we were working that day and they wanted something fun to do. I still haven't been even though we live here, so it will be another cool thing to mark off my list. We are very blessed to live close to numerous restaurants, cultural, and entertainment venues. We love that about living in south Florida!