Hello from Sunny Florida!!

Oh, how I love this place!!! We had a perfectly smooth trip down here on Saturday - no hitches whatsoever, and we are now having the BEST vacation. This is our 6th time here (Sanibel Island) and I fall more in love with this place each time we come. It feels like home. It's beautiful, tranquil, unpopulated, unspoiled, uncommercialized, has the total "beachy" feel, and is SO relaxing. Just amazing. And the weather has cooperated PERFECTLY. Clear and sunny and 80 each day. And no wind. None. Now THAT is awesome. I'm definitely not missing the wind.

Even better is watching Jack and Noah fall in love with this place too. They can't get enough - always ready to do the NEXT thing. Each day, we've gotten up early to go "shelling" - a total adventure in itself (I could do 3 posts on that topic alone); we go biking on the bike trails; we sit by the pool; we play tennis; we sit on the lanai and chat; and we have been eating some really yummy seafood. Right now at 10:30 p.m. I'm sitting outside - it's 68 degrees - listening to the waves crash on the beach and feeling the ocean air on my face. Doesn't get better than this.

Here we are on a 5 mile bike ride - hard to see, but there's a "Caution: Alligators" sign above Jack and Noah's heads - - sure enough, we saw two down this path.HARD to get a picture of them, but here's one - the thing out in the water.

We'd been here less than 24 hours when Grandpa started in on Ocean Creatures 101. We're eating breakfast our first morning when Grandpa shows up with an octopus. Yep, the 8-legged kind. He was a resident in a shell that my dad had picked up, and dad didn't realize the shell was occupied until he came back from the beach. He also brought back some starfish. Jack and Noah were excited to have a pet octopus for a day. (We released him safely back to the ocean at the end of the day. I'm told dead octopus stink. I didn't care to find out). (He's in the shell):

The next day, Grandpa showed up with a hermit crab. Jack didn't like him. We didn't keep him for a pet. Here we are SHELLING. This is a totally addictive activity. Sanibel is known as the 3rd best shelling beach in the world and it certainly lives up to it's reputation. You can find TONS here, and you can find some real beauties if you put a little effort into it. Meaning: searching at the time of low tide, no matter when that may be (my dad has been known to go in the middle of the night - luckily this week, it's been between 7 and 8 a.m.); wading around in freezing cold water; straining your eyes and neck continuously to catch a glimpse of the prizes concealed by the sand; stooping over at the waist for hours, resulting in back pain and muscle tension; and yet it's so much fun. My dad is an expert, and we've all had fun learning from him. Noah has competely been bitten by the bug, attaching himself to my dad's side, hoping to learn from the master. It couldn't be cuter.

(This is at 7:00 a.m.!!!)

There's a stance people use here called the "Sanibel Stoop" - everyone at the beach is always bent over at the waist in search of treasures, and as you can see, we do it well:
Noah -

My mom:And Jack:
And I'll leave you with some gratuitous pics of our favorite vacation destination:
(This is my dad and his best buddy of 40 (?) years who joined us for a few days - more on that later) Jack and Noah in a dead run at 7:00 a.m. -
Have I mentioned I love this place?