A Birthday Party in Paradise!!

“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”~ Lucille ball

Sorry for the delays on posting, been very busy.....but in a good way!! We are back down to Sanibel Island Florida!! We have made it a tradition to have a family trip down here every year...This time it will be for 2 whole weeks!  This year we moved the trip up a month because our daughter Jess is going to India for 7 weeks on a scholarship from Virginia Tech Vet School, and she leaves the end of June, so we wanted to make sure she had a couple of weeks to enjoy the summer...it just so happened that we get to spend her birthday and Father's Day down here in paradise!!

We (Dad, Mom, Hubby and Myself) drove down here, (I am always SO happy to find me a palm tree!!)

Palm tree hugger!

and Jess and Brad flew down.  Let me introduce you to all the stars of this show...First are my Mom and Dad, who we call 'Mama and Papa'.

Mama and Papa

 Next is my hubby and myself.

Me and Junonia Jim

 ...and last, but certainly not least is our daughter Jess and her hubby Brad! They have been newlyweds for almost 3 years now! They have only been able to spend their July anniversary together only one year, the first one...Brad went to China last July on a Fulbright Scholarship to China!!  He is a history teacher and Debate Coach at Blacksburg High School in VA!

Brad and Jess

 We all got together about 6:30 on Saturday when we picked them up at the airport down here, and we did our grocery shopping back in Ft. Myers before we traveled back to the island, then we have our traditional first night's dinner at Hungry Heron with our favorite waitress Lori!  We are always greeted with big smiles and big hugs....and she always remembers Hubby and my drink orders!!

We all woke up Sunday to a beautiful day, and began adjusting our eating schedule to the low tide....we have to allow an hour before the low to make sure we have all opportunities!! :)  So this year it will be early dinners as low tide is early evenings.  The beaches seem to be pretty clean of shells this time, can't tell high tide lines, and low tide did not prove to be very fruitful!! But that's okay, we're in paradise!! 

Jess, Brad and I walked next door to Gulfside City Park and found our first Geocache, hopefully we will have a chance to find the many more around the island....I've been thinking that I might put out my first Geocache while here....kinda like a family cache!! I think it would be great fun....it will be an excuse to come here more often for maintenance to keep it in good shape!! ;)

Daddy and Brad like to dig for their shells, so they looked around to find something to dig around, and we eventually found some crab pots that were buried right in front of the condo, and we have been working them for the last couple of days....we all have sore fingers, and Brad even attempted to shorten his finger some on a pen shell, but it's all in the fun of the hunt!!  Hubby has been walking down toward the east and has found lots of live shells, but he hasn't had great luck with the numbers either!  Jess and I have each found a pretty alphabet cone while digging with Daddy and Brad!!

Not too bad!

Jess' Alphabet Cone....beautiful colors!

Brad's Double Jewel box

My Alphabet Cone!

 Jess' birthday was yesterday, she turned 25 years old!! I always thought it was funny that my birthdays seemed to make my parents feel older than there's did, I completely understand that feeling now!! :\ We had a little birthday cake for her, couldn't find cake pans, so we made do with what we had!! She seemed to enjoy it!!

 ..and of course it had to have animal print candles for the vet student!!

 She and Brad played some basketball and we mostly just hung out around the condo for most of the day....

 Jess asked for 2 things for her birthday....one was some Gramma Dot's Key Lime pie....which is to die for!!....that was easy.....the other was to find a Junonia!!  Of course you probably already know that didn't happen, but we have only been here a couple of days....so we'll see!!

Birthday dinner at Gramma Dot's!!

Jess wanted to take Brad to Cayo Costa since he has never been so we scheduled a trip with Captain Brian, see his blog here.  We have never been with Capt. Brian, but he comes highly recommended from my blogging buddies, and I have been enjoying his blog too! We go out with him on Saturday so I hopefully will have some great stories to share after that trip!!

More later!!

::Hugs::