Halloween

Scott came home early on Halloween so he could help the kids get their pumpkins carved after school. Each child got to carve their own pumpkin (except for Nate--he just told us what he wanted and Scott carved it for him). All of them did a great job with their pumpkins.





Scott took the kids trick or treating in our neighborhood.

Owen stayed home with me and helped greet trick or treaters at the door. I'd open the door, he'd crawl into the doorway, and then he'd continuously wave and say "hi" to everyone that came up to the door. It was the cutest thing.



The cutest trick or treaters that I saw all night.

Floriday Day 5

This was our last day there. I wasn't ready to go home yet--I wanted just one more day. But, since we HAD to go home, I made Scott get up super early so we could enjoy what little time we had left.

We had heard that the best time to look for shells was first thing in the morning as the tide was going out. So, we put on our swimsuits and headed down to the beach. But, we didn't have the beautiful 80 degree weather we'd had the day before. This day was COLD. When I say cold, I should clarify that it wasn't "Idaho cold", but it was "Florida cold" at 67 degrees and windy. We had planned on swimming again in the ocean, but decided to keep our shirts on and only dip our feet in the water so we wouldn't freeze.



I love the following pictures. I was trying to get Scott to pose in front of the waves. Notice the picture where the wave is sneaking up on him (I saw it and didn't warn him), and then notice him running from it. I love it!






When we'd found enough shells to take back to the kids, we left the cold beach and went to the heated swimming pool.



There are 15 different swimming pools on the resort (the resort is 2 miles long), and we'd been to a smaller pool, but we wanted to check out the main pool. It overlooks the ocean. We swam for a little bit in the pool, then headed over to the hot tub because it was just so cold outside. Then we headed back to our room. We showered and got dressed, then packed everything up and checked out.

We still had a couple of hours till our flight, so we decided to window shop at the outlet malls that were on the way back to the airport. When we'd wasted enough time, we headed to the airport, turned in our rental car, and caught our flight (at 5:30pm). We had a really short layover (45 minutes) in Minneapolis, then it was home to Boise. Our flight got in at 11:30 and we arrived home just after midnight. And may I just say, I WAS TIRED. I'd gotten up at 7:30 that morning and midnight here was 2 am Florida time--that's a long day. But, just to make me even more tired, I had to unpack and get laundry started (or I'd never get through it all the next day). I finally crawled into bed at 2am (4am Florida time).

It was a great vacation.

Florida Day 4

After a rainy Friday, we awoke to a beautiful sunny Saturday.

The convention we were attending had officially ended the day before, so we were free to just play. We threw on our swimsuits and headed down to the beach to swim.



Some of our friends who were attending the convention had also planned to stay an extra day to play, and we saw them down on the beach. They had some extra boogie boards that they offered to us to use. It was so much fun. The beach leading up to Captiva Island is a very gradual drop, so we could go out a long way and still touch. Boogie boarding was a blast. While we were out with the boards, one of our friends shouted at us to look at some dolphins swimming past. Dolphins! Just swimming not very far from us--it was amazing. We watched them for a while, then swam back to the beach and got the camera to take some pictures.



When we decided we'd had as much sun exposure as we dared, we tore ourselves away from the beach and went back to our room to get showered and dressed for the day.

We headed to the other end of the island and got lunch at a fast food pizza place (which actually had really good pizza). Then we did some souvenir shopping at a fun little shop named "She Sells Sea Shells". Then we headed over to the wildlife refuge. We did the tram tour our second day there, and our tour guide told us that if we had time, we should do the boat tour of the back bay waters. We were actually hoping to just rent a canoe and explore ourselves. But we got there too late in the day (they stop renting out canoes at 3 in the afternoon). So we paid a little extra and took a guided boat tour. It was worth it.

A funny little side story--when we were paying for our tour, I said we were there for the 6:00 tour. The lady (who was going to be our tour guide) said, "You mean the 5:00 tour?". I laughed and said that I did mean the 5:00 tour, that it had just been a long day. She said, "That's alright. You've got pregnancy brain, so it's allowed." I was a little taken back and didn't know what to say, so I just didn't say anything. I knew I had been eating a LOT on our vacation, but I didn't realize I'd eaten enough to look like I was pregnant. As we walked away, I asked Scott if I really looked pregnant, and he assured me I didn't, but still I was pretty paranoid. A little later when we saw this lady, she asked if we knew if we were having a boy or a girl. Scott delicately told her that I wasn't pregnant. She turned red and apologized profusely to me. She said, "I thought you said you were--I heard you talking about buying something for the baby..." And then it all made sense. As we were heading over to pay, we walked past a display of really cute onesies and we stopped to look at them and talked about getting one for Owen. Instead of thinking that we already had a baby at home, she assumed we were expecting a baby. She assured me that I didn't look at all like I was pregnant and apologized again. So then I wasn't quite so paranoid about how much I'd eaten while on vacation...but I still was just a little bit.

The tour started indoors with information, aquariums and touch tanks.





Then we boarded the boat.






The "sunset cruise" took us out past the Rookery Islands. They weren't so much islands as much as just shallow water where mangrove forests were growing. This is where the birds come home at night to rest. When we were headed out past them, there were only a few birds spotting them.






By the time we came back past them, they were full of beautiful birds seeking refuge for the night.



We saw several dolphins while were out.



We saw lots of birds.




We got some rain, which resulted in a beautiful rainbow.



We got to watch the sun set over the water. It was magnificent.








It was the perfect way to spend our last evening together in Florida.


We ended our night with dinner at the Bayside Restaurant back at our resort (the same place we ate the first night). This time I went for a salad and no dessert (still feeling just a little paranoid about being mistaken for being pregnant). After dinner we stopped by the candy store to get more presents for the kids. Then we went back to our room and I started packing us up to leave the next day.

It really was a perfect day.