Floriday Day 2 (the second half)

After our stroll along the beach, it was time for our wildlife refuge tram tour. The whole group went. We had an hour and a half long tram tour through the J. N. "Ding" Darling Wildlife Refuge. It was great having a tour guide to pass on his wealth of knowledge about the area and the wildlife.

There were a lot of beautiful birds.








We stopped and walked out by the water.







We got to have a close up look at the mangrove trees. These trees are amazing. They defy the laws of nature by growing in salt water (salt kills plants). They have little orange pores that open to take in oxygen when the tide goes down, and then when the water rises, the pores close to keep the salt out. These mangrove trees were everywhere, and I never got tired of looking at them--they are beautiful trees.




Some horseshoe crabs that got stuck when the tide dropped (which, by the way, aren't in the crab family at all, but an ancient relative of the spider family--I was little creeped out by them once I learned they were a spider).


We were lucky enough to spot an alligator on our tour.



A gopher tortoise.


The point they think Ponce de Leon's ship must have come through.

Some of the scenery from out tour.




It really was a great tour. But, while we were out by the water, we were introduced to the little "no-see-um" bug. It's tiny, but it bites like a mosquito. Except their bit hurts so much worse than a mosquito. You'd feel the bite, look down and only see a tiny black dot--thus the name "no-see-um". And you'd think, that little thing can't be the thing that's causing such a painful bite, but it is--it's vicious. And the bite itches so much worse than a mosquito bite. My bites continued to itch clear through this whole week, and now are all scabs from me itching them raw. Seriously an annoying bug. They were the only part of Florida that I didn't love.

After the tour, we headed into town for our group dinner at a restaurant. It was a buffet, and I ate way too much food (mostly too much desserts from the dessert buffet). But it was very good food. After dinner, we headed back to the other end of the island to our resort. We called the kids to say goodnight and tell them about our adventures. Then we went for a late night swim in the pool that was close to our room (trying to work off some of the desserts we ate). It was an amazing day!

Florida--Day 2 (First Half)

When we got to the resort the night before, it was dark. So on the morning of our second day, we got to really see where we were staying. I'm not computer savvy enough to figure out how to post pictures from the internet onto here, so I'm posting the link to the resort we stayed in, and you all have to go take a look www.southseas.com.

Captiva is an island off the south western side of Florida, and South Seas Resort is at the very tip of Captiva island. Because it's such a narrow island, you can walk from bay side (where our room was) to beach side in about three minutes. Here's the map we used driving there. You can see the airport in Fort Myers where we flew in. It was about an hour drive, and we got to take a beautiful toll bridge over the bay to Sanibel Island, which then turns into Captiva Island, and then at the end of the island was our resort.




We slept in a bit that first morning because we were so tired from traveling the day before. After we got up, we got ready and headed over to the conference room for lunch and an introduction meeting. We left early so we could look at everything on our walk over. The whole time I was there, I was amazed at all the beautiful birds that were everywhere.






It was another company's retreat, and Scott was just a vendor (presenting insurance options to them), so we didn't need to stay for all their meetings. So after introductions in the meeting, we snuck out and went down to the beach. We only had an hour and a half before we needed to meet back up with the group, so we just walked up the beach for a little bit and got our feet wet.





I was amazed at all the shells that were lying on the beach. Huge piles of shells everywhere. They were so beautiful. I may or may not have gone a bit overboard on collecting shells to bring back to the kids.




The water was so warm and the weather was perfect (a bit hot and humid for Scott, but I thought it felt wonderful). We were wishing we had time to get more than just our feet wet.

Birds everywhere!



A cool caterpillar/grub that we saw walking back from the beach.


The other thing that was everywhere, was lizards. They were little and fast and were everywhere we went. During the day, they would scurry about on the ground.


At night, they liked to hang out on the outside of our hotel. I think they liked the heat that the stucco walls retained at night.

After just a little bit of time out on the beach, it was time to head to the other end of the island for a wildlife refuge tour. But, I'll save that for another post because I have a ton of pictures from that.

Florida--Day 1

As this summer was drawing to a close, Scott e-mailed me the list of his upcoming trips and asked "Wanna come on any of these?".

First there was California for three days. I really considered going on that one and taking the older three kids to Sea World, but the cost of airplane tickets for all of us was going to be pretty hefty and we'd only end up with about a day and a half to play once you figured in our travel time, so I decided it wasn't worth it.

Then there was Sun Valley for Governor's Cup. I was going to go with him on that one, but my Grandma died and Scott ended up going by himself.

Then there was Sun Valley again. That's when Shauna's mother-in-law died. And once again, Scott went by himself.

Lastly there was Florida. Captiva Island South Seas Resort. Scott needed to go present at a conference there. All I would need to do is pay for my plane ticket, because Scott's work was paying for the rental car and room. It would be easy for me to come along. Except when I looked up the price of the plane ticket, it was $650. I couldn't justify spending that much. But then I remembered that I have a ton of SkyMiles that I've racked up on our credit card. So I used some of those and got the plane ticket for free. So, as all those other trips came and went (and I had to stay home with the kids), I just kept thinking--at least I get to go to Florida.

My parents graciously offered to come stay with the kids as their birthday present to Scott, and they got into town Tuesday afternoon. I was in a bit of a panic in the days leading up to our trip, trying to get everything done and ready to leave. They announced in church on Sunday that a girl in the ward had plums she was trying to give away, so I took a box. So in addition to getting the house clean and the laundry done, I spent all day Tuesday canning plums (jam and syrup). I didn't even get the chance to start packing till about 11 the night before our trip.

Scott and I finished packing around 12:30 Tuesday night. Our flight was scheduled to leave Boise at 5:30, so we needed to be to the airport by 4:30, which meant we needed to leave our house at 4:00am. So, I decided to shower and get dressed and ready BEFORE going to bed, so I could completely finish packing (makeup and everything) before going to sleep. I laid down to sleep at 1:30am and got 2 hours of sleep before we got up at 3:30 and left for the airport by 4:00.

The rest of the day was a blur of plane rides (Boise to Minneapolis then Minneapolis to Fort Myers), lay overs (4 hours in Minneapolis), napping when and where ever we could (airplane seats are so uncomfortable, but my husband has a great shoulder that he let me use, and there's a wonderful lounge upstairs in the Minneapolis airport that wasn't busy and I was able to push together two chairs and lay down and sleep), and finally getting to Florida at 5:30 in the evening. We rented a car, then drove an hour to the resort. It was just before 7pm when we finally got settled into our room. To say the least, we were pretty exhausted.

Our room had a kitchen, but we didn't do any cooking while we were there (I do enough cooking at home, so we ate out the whole time).

Scott on the phone--he's ALWAYS on the phone.

Our bedroom.

The patio. Our room was bayside and this balcony looked out over the water. It was screened in to keep the little lizards out (there were lizard EVERYWHERE).

We called the kids to tell them we'd made it safe, then went out for dinner. We went to the Bayside Restaurant that was part of the resort and had a delightful dinner. As we were walking up to the restaurant, we spotted a manatee swimming in the harbor--our first dose of Floridian wildlife. And let me just say now, I did NOT stick to my diet while we were on vacation--not one little bit. That night Scott had grouper (some kind of fish) and I had a big old hamburger with blue cheese melted on it (although I did ask for a salad instead of fries). And since we were both very full at the end of dinner, we asked for our dessert to go. We got chocolate cake with fresh berries on it, and ate it later back in our room.

The Next Day...

Ok, so with a little bit of sleep behind me (and when I say little, I mean little--Owen was up a LOT in the night), I'm not quite as irritated by the hair today. And I've come to these conclusions:

--I may have been a little tired and a LOT emotional when I reacted yesterday.
--I still think an apology was in order, but know that I will never get one because of stubbornness.
--I still think that proper etiquette requires a person to ask permission before giving haircuts to minors.

but...

--I realize that there are worse things a person can do than shaving off a little boy's hair.
--Even though I am still mad about the haircut, I am extremely grateful for the 5 days of babysitting that allowed me to go on an amazing vacation.
--Let's be real, I have 6 kids-I'm never going to have the "perfect" family picture.
and
--Nate is still the most handsome 3 year old around, no matter how much hair he has on top of his head.

So, instead of totally cancelling pictures, I've postponed them till Saturday (I can't do them any later, because then Scott is off to Alaska again). That way I have 4 more days to come to grips with Nate's haircut and not be quite so angry by the time we have them taken. Now if only there was some magical potion that I could put on Nate's hair to make it grow.