Naples

Early Tuesday morning we got up and drove to Naples Florida.

Its on the SouthWest corner of the state.

Mike had to work in Port Charlotte. Its about an hour north of Naples.

He worked very hard. For 10 minutes.Then we drove to our hotel. It was a beautiful resort.

It rained most of the day. All the way from Orlando to Naples, a steady drizzle to heavy rain. We were disappointed that we might not get to show the boys the gulf beach.

We got to the resort, went grocery shopping, and the rain started to let up! Yeah!! We had a 1 bedroom suite with full kitchen and balcony.

The full kitchen was great because we went to the store and bought food to cook instead of spending a fortune eating out. We had tilipia stuffed with crab, and lobster ravioli with shrimp scampi sauce. YUMM!

Mike buys things like chips and dip for his snack, I buy seaweed salad.

What does Caleb eat?

My seaweed salad!!! Here I'm cooking dinner. For some reason, cooking in a resort doesn't feel like cooking does at home, and doesn't bother me. I actually prefer it. (saves money!) Besides, even tho I put things in the dishwasher, I didn't have to CLEAN it!! It totally stopped raining while we were eating dinner, so we headed down to the beach. Naples is the most prettiest town we have seen in Florida yet. It has beautiful architecture, beautiful streets lined with tropical plants and lights. The beaches on the west side are different than the Atlantic beaches. These are white sandy beaches, while the Atlantic has more coarse sand, and larger rocks. We strolled about a mile south, then headed back.

On our way back I noticed Caleb was holding his pants up. His pockets were so full of seashells that his pants were literally falling off of him! Luckily, Mikey had cargo shorts on with lots of side pockets, so he took the shells for Caleb.

We also found thousands of live clams. Little baby ones. They wash up on shore, and if you watch carefully, you can see them dig themselves back into the sand.

Wednesday morning we woke and drove across the state. The road is called Alligator Alley. I know why!! I saw at least a dozen alligators.The entire length has a swampy river next to it. Most of the water is still, but every half mile or so, you'd see a ripple flowing in the water with 2 eyes sticking up in front. Sometimes you'd see an entire alligator out of the water walking along the edge. They have fenced in the entire length tho since there were so many gators hit and killed. Here you can see how it looked the entire way. From the road way to the trees is swampy water, with just next to the trees being deeper. We stayed at the same hotel that have several times already. Its the one with the little putt putt golf next to the swimming pool. We had dinner at our favorite Palm Beach waterfront restaurant.

While we were eating, we got to watch a boat that was stranded in the middle of the waterway. Those poor people! A storm was coming and every time they tried to start their engine tons of black smoke came out.

We finished our dinner just as the rain came. Since it was raining again, we decided that instead of going to the beach we would just play in the swimming pool, and play putt putt.

Mike put in his hard 45 min of work, while the boys and I played Toon Town in the truck outside on the laptop. Love that WiFi!!

Today we played again in the pool, then packed up and headed home. But first we stopped at a Seaside beach restaurant. There was a live band playing, and the boys decided to go dance on stage.

Here is the 4 of us next to the restaurant. Oops, I meant the 3 of us, and a scary skeleton pirate .

We had a nice lunch here. The boys are laughing at this picture because it looks like the shark is getting ready to eat my head. Here is Caleb at home with his collection of seashells from Naples. Another fun filled work week for Mikey!

A shout of CONGRATULATIONS to Leonard and Michelle!

They had an ultrasound today that showed they are having a BOY!!

Now I can send them my boys clothes and toys!!

The due date is Halloween!