Florida

Finally getting to posting more about Florida (as 'promised' here).  Whenever I take a bunch of pictures, it takes me a while to go through them all and narrow them down.  You'll probably wonder if I really did narrow them down!  There were a bunch more!

We had a wonderful time in Florida.  The weather was perfect - record weather for that time of year.  High 70s, low 80s every day, only one rain while we slept one night and the water was 76 where it is usually 68 or so that time of year.

I had heard of Sanibel from my chiropractor.  They described it as an island that is a little town with bike trails around the whole island.  It is fairly south (off Fort Myers) on the gulf side, so we decided to try it out.

Our expectations were more of a cute, Martha's Vineyard type town, so we were slightly disappointed at very first.  But, our disappointments quickly dissipated.  We quickly grew to appreciate the natural and rustic beauty of the island.  There are zero high rises and very family friendly with great beaches with shallow water for the kids and lots of seashells and bike trails.

The causeway onto Sanibel Island was a sight to see after the long 20 hour drive (from Indiana)!

I was out cold in the car while Doug and kids drove around the island a bit and walked along the beach some (he got this pic of the kids).  I did come to the land of the living later and joined them on the beach while we waited until our condo was ready.

The view from our condo and the walk we walked every day down to the beach and pool.

 The beautiful beach at the end of the walkway

 have I mentioned that I love the beach?  I couldn't take it in enough!

Sanibel is also well known for it's shelling.  There were unbelievable amounts of shells on the beach as if someone just dumped buckets of them.

We did not gather or organize these at all.  This is how they were on the beach.

We had fun collecting them and did some early morning sunrise shell hunts.

 There were a lot of these Lightning Whelk (gastropod mollusks) egg cases on the beach, too.
The kids had a blast exploring all the ocean life.

There were a bunch of giant mussel shells, too

Sutton's shadow holding giant mussel shells that we found still connected and in the shape of a heart :)

 One of the mornings we got up before the sun to hunt for shells

It was so early that Hudson put his shirt on backwards :)

pretty sunrise

Success!  

Doug actually found all of these, because he walked ahead to beat anyone else coming out.  

He found some neat ones.

 Another day prior, we didn't get up quite early enough, but it was still a pretty morning and walk

It was a great beach for running, too.  Doug and I took turns.