What's a Vacation Without Shuffleboard?!

 

 Yes, I'm STILL sharing summer beach vacation pictures.  I just can't help myself.  We had so much fun, plus I want our families to see the boys on their first beach trip.

We tried not to eat out a ton, but we did go out to eat several times.  Most of the restaurants had a really good selection of things for the boys, plus they always had crayons and kid cups for them as well!

 Shrimp Eggs Benedict at the Over Easy Cafe!  It was wonderful!

After a fun breakfast out, the boys were dying to play shuffleboard!

They did a pretty good job of using the pole to shuffle the puck along.  Even Noah got in on the action!

They wanted to do shuffleboard most mornings!

It was such a fun, neat walkway to the beach.  There is so much natural vegetation on Sanibel Island.  We just loved it!

The boys really, really enjoyed the pool!  They wanted to be there everyday and they would have swam all the way through nap!  They were some tired little boys.  Noah wasn't as thrilled with the pool, so we kept him occupied with other things, or I would take him back and put him down for nap.

We  just loved the place we stayed.  It was so wonderful and it's just beautiful, isn't it?!

Hurricane Interruption

We knew when we were driving down to the beach that there was a hurricane coming.  We kept a good eye on the weather while we were there and we decided to "evacuate" to Fort Myers the day that it was supposed to hit.  We packed up our stuff and headed insland, as to not be on a barrier island during a hurricane!  We had a fantastic lunch at The Shrimp Shack and then we went to this fun orange place.  We sampled different juices and then got ice cream!

It was raining so hard but everyone enjoyed their ice cream!

After that we checked into our hotel, ate dinner, and then swam in the indoor pool.  After that we got everyone ready for bed and tried our best to get everyone to go down to sleep.  It's pretty hard sleeping with 3 kids in a hotel room, but we did our best!  Noah woke up a good bit, so by morning, I was exhausted!  We were happy to head back to our resort the next morning when the hurricane had passed.

We were greeted by flooded areas and angry, dark waves!

I was just glad that no serious damage had been done to any structures and generally, people were safe!

Aaaaand Just a Littlle More Vacation!

Our last morning at the resort, we had breakfast in our room, started doing some packing, and then headed down to the splash pad.

We played at the splash pad and then had another swim before it was time to go.

It was a really fun 2 days and we definitely made some sweet memories.  He boys said this was their favorite part of the trip!

It was a beautiful and fun resort!  I have no idea when we'll be back, but we had a great time while we were there!

More Art of Animation

 I know my blog posts are out of order now, but I'm trying to get it done while Noah is sleeping and the boys are at school!  Just pretend that they're in order!

The next morning we headed down to the cafeteria to eat breakfast.

Then we walked around Radiator Springs for a bit.

The boys loved seeing the cars and getting up close and personal with them!

It was all so cute!

We had some naptime for Noah and swimtime for the boys.

Then after dinner we headed back over to see the Cars one more time!

JM and Matthew loved their little bed that folded out of the wall!

First Trip to the Beach!

So, continuing on my summer vacation posts......We drove from Orlando down to Sanibel Island.  We've never taken a family beach vacation before and we had never been to Sanibel Island before either.  We were so excited to get there and let the boys see and experience the ocean!  Here's their first reaction to seeing the beach for the first time!  They were really, really excited!

Sanibel is so different than going to Gulf Shores or Destin (which is what we grew up doing, being from Alabama).  There's not a lot of people there at all, there are NO high rises, and there's lots of beach vegetation.  After going to a beautiful, nearly empty beach, with no huge condos looming nearby, we want to come back every year!

The boys were so excited and they all took to the water wonderfully.  I was worried that Matthew might not like it, but they just all loved it.  It was so fun to sit and watch them!

Can you tell John Michael loved it the most?!

More beach posts to come....