Sunsets

What a great way to end my posting about our Florida trip.  We enjoyed sunsets almost every day.  It was a different crew each day that went but everyone always had fun.

Beach time

During our 10 days in Florida, I think we made it to the beach nearly every morning and nearly every evening for sunset.  Everyone did a lot of walking and shell finding.  You should have seen the hordes of amazing shells we came home from.  If you ever visit our Bonita house you will find them all cleaned up in a huge glass dish on the dining room table.  These are shell I would have thought we would have had to buy, but we were amazing shellers.  Going early and late each day certainly helped.  By the end of the trip we were getting pretty picky.

Turtles and other wild life

The empty lot next to our new house has a leopard tortoise nest on it.  We saw the turtle a number of times, but never had our camera close.  However, we did find out the name of the tortoise is Pepe and he is well loved by our neighbors.  To get good pictures of turtles we just headed down the road to Barefoot Beach which has loads of nesting Leopard Tortoises.  This is a not to be missed beach.  One of the highest rated in the country.  Our first trip back to Barefoot we saw no fewer than 4 different turtles.  Very cool.

Then to add color to our trip, we took a morning and went to Everglades Wonder Gardens in Bonita Springs which is one of the last historic roadside attractions (started in 1936) still in business.  It was actual saved from development recently by a non-profit and is so corny its cool.  We got to see peacocks, flamingos, loads of alligators and more lizards and snakes than I care to know existed.  It really was cool though.

Everglades Tour

For those of you who haven't been to the Everglades... it is definitely an experience not to be forgotten.  Unfortunately we got poured on (torrential downpour) but we didn't let that ruin our great time.  We did a fabulous airboat tour and even got to enjoy some alligators.  A little too close for my taste, but Lily was the first to volunteer and didn't seem the least bit scared.  Ugh!  I was petrified holding the camera.

Naples Botanical Gardens

Before you think we spent all our time in Florida at the beach (yes we did do this daily), we also spent a lot of time exploring the surrounds.  First stop, the Naples Botanical Garden which is fabulous!  It truly was beautiful and fun for everyone.

Katie, Chris, Courtney and Lily enjoying a break on the swings

Turtle made of shells

Venita & Lily

Courtney and Lily

Pineapples are so cool

Chris, Lily and Kim looking tropical

Aunt Venita and Uncle Dave

Amazing orchids

Chris, Katie and Lily

Lily

Katie (taken by Lily)

Lily

Family, from left to right:  Lily, Courtney, Katie, Christopher, Dave, Venita & Chris

They even had butterflies

And lots of lily pad ponds

More family:  from left to right Lily, Kim, Christopher, Katie, Courtney, Venita & Dave

Florida

For Spring Break, for 10 whole days, we got to join Chris and our brand new house in Bonita Springs, Florida.  We couldn't be more happy with how it turned out and the location is everything we dreamed of as you will see from the next series of posts.

We were also joined for the first 7 days by the Cremers (Venita, Dave, Courtney, Christopher and even Katie joined us), then there was overlap and the last seven days had the add of Stef & Chad Dixon.  Boy, was it ever a fantastic time.

Here a few pictures to get us started.

Beautiful sunsets on Bonita Beach

Pool time - love the new pool

Shelling on Sanibel Island

Kayaking with the Manatees at Lovers Key State Park

Feet in the shells