Friday, February 8, 2013

Sanibel & Captiva

It's been a fun week at the Blue House . . . not really.  At least not for me. I've been sick in bed since Saturday, four days of fever and now it's just a bad cold. Today is the first day I've been able to even think halfway clearly (emphasis on half).  The kids, on the other hand, probably really have thought this was a fun week. They've been drawing and playing legos as much as they want. It's been like a second winter break for them. 

Speaking of winter break, I thought I'd post some photos from our recent Florida trip.  From the moment we arrived in Florida, the girls begged to go shelling.  Marc checked the tide schedules and picked the perfect day for us to go to the perfect shelling spot, Sanibel Island.  We got up before the sun and drove out to the island, but that was about as far as we got in our planning.  We had no idea where we were going to go once we got to the island.  So I borrowed Marc's iphone and found the cutest blog, I Love Shelling, that is all about shelling on Sanibel. Score! We were able to find a few different beaches to try out. If we had discovered this blog a little sooner maybe we would have been better prepared like the serious shellers who bring nets, shovels, and buckets, but we just used our hands and stuffed the keepers in our pockets. 

Okay, enough of my rambling, let's just get to the pictures, shall we?

We were on Lighthouse Beach for all of five minutes when Marc and the girls found their first starfish.
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It was fun to watch him move around -- don't worry we put him back!
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Ryne wasn't as much into shelling as he was just exploring the beach, but he did bring me a handful to admire.
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The lighthouse all dressed up for Christmas.
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When my friend Dawn goes on vacation her family identifies 132 different kinds of birds; I can't even tell what kind of seagull this is. Laughing gull, Dawn? It should be laughing at me for spending over an hour on the internet trying to figure out what it is!
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Brown pelican. Ha!
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Strange signs of life below the sand.
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Grace was glad to hear the little starfish will grow its ray back.
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No, we didn't add a cute little dude to our family, but this guy was the star of the beach for finding this huge conch shell. He was so proud! We were sad he couldn't keep it, but obviously someone still considered it home.
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Marc's find might not be as big, but the colors are gorgeous and that little crab fellow is cute.
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Part of me doesn't want to hit publish on this post until I've identified everything in all my pictures.  But that's proving quite a bit more difficult than I thought, especially for a picture I've already deleted because I decided it was more gross than interesting (it might possibly be a sea cucumber). So I've decided to just tell the homeschooler in me to go back to bed, so the rest of me can say, "Hey look at this cool shell-bridge-thingy sticking out of the sand." There, I feel much better.
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Heart shell. Scientific name, really.
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It inspired my anniversary message. Forgive me for reposting, but how often do you get to celebrate 20 years of marriage?
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Even the greenery we found on the way back to the car was beautiful.
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We also found some "starfish" grass (actually called Egyptian grass, go figure).
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I was sad to see I took very few shots of the kids while we were at Sanibel, but I did get one of Anna at Blind Pass. That's Captiva Island behind her, and those rocks were actually a great shelling spot.  Marc and the kids would just stick their hands in the water as the waves crashed ashore and would literally catch handfulls of shells. 
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After a hard morning of shelling, we took our wet, sandy, windblown selves out to lunch at Cheeburger Cheeburger and stuffed ourselves silly. It was a wonderful day!

1 comment:

  1. That is my kind of vacay. It's so much fun just to take in the beauty of the creation. You took some great pictures. I must be a homeschool mom, too, bc I want to see the sea cucumber one. HA!

    I think you are right, and it is a laughing gull. Shore birds are the most difficult for me bc I don't get to see them as often. I considered the Franklin's Gull because the hood on your bird is larger than what is pictured for the Laughing gull in my Sibley. But, the tail spots look just like the laughing and not large enough for Franklin's.

    I hope you are feeling better. :)

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