Florida

I love this picture! I have no idea what settings I used - but it defines Florida for me - white sandy beaches, with fine white sand everywhere (especially if Big D is involved ... hair, face, eyes, mouth, swim diaper ...), gorgeous water and blue sky forever. We saw rays in the water, went boogie boarding, heard the phrase, "Grandpa, this is the best day, EVER!", played with cousins (aren't they the best?!), swam in the ocean everyday, shared every minute we could with Grandpa and Grandma ...
We even got to go on a Pirate cruise, thank you G&G Flora! And had seafood at Crabby Bills - Miss Lilly even tasted frog legs and liked them! The kids had a water squirt gun fight on the pirate ship, listened to pirate stories, got pirate booty and pirate facial hair :) and then had a pirate dance party ... then we went swimming in G&G's pool and had ice cream at the very cheap, very fabulous, very small, but full of character Candy Kitchen (thank you to the cousins for introducing us!)
What is it with Big D and his tongue lately - he has it out in almost all of the pics! Maybe he likes to taste the sand ?!? We visited the Fort DeSoto beach - I think probably in my top 5 favorite places in the world - just gorgeous, but very hot this time of year! We also went to Indian Rocks beach almost every day until noon, then we'd go back to G&G's, eat, nap, swim, eat, swim ... J.D. and I escaped to Orlando for an afternoon and got to go to the temple there - just beautiful - and have dinner without the kids! I did some shopping at the outlet malls and we checked out a 'life is good' t-shirt shop and a surf shop, where Master S got a boogie board ... the reason for the best day ever! J.D.'s parents also took us to the zoo - where Miss Lilly rode a camel, Master S and Miss Lilly rode their first roller-coaster. I don't think Miss Lilly will ride one again for awhile, but I think Master S has some amusement parks in his future. Big D also got to be the engineer for the train ... he was in heaven and I got to feed a giraffe, which BTW they have very LONG tongues and they feel like sand paper, just in case you were curious.
So, after 16 hours in the car there and 16 hours back with 7 days in between, it was a wonderful vacation and we are already wondering when we can go back! The kids traveled amazingly well (thank you, whoever invented portable DVD players and Redboxes at every McD's!) and we even had a family scavenger hunt in the car (looking for silos, trains, ponds, bridges, men with hats, churches, schools, cows, tractors ... ) and listened to some great literature (Pippi Longstocking, Paddington Bear, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator). Thank you G&G Flora - it was a wonderful trip and a perfect family vacation!