Florida Vacation

We are back from a restful (mostly) vacation in Florida. Caroline came down with an ear infection (and then an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic), which added a little bit of extra fun to the time. But, she was a trooper and mostly dealt with it by sleeping a lot. She was able to have a good deal of fun though, as you can see from her stylish sunglasses. And, at least we didn't have the problems of my sister, whose flight to Atlanta got diverted to Nashville and they ended up driving the rest of the way. Hooray for direct flights.

My parents rented a great house out with room enough for all of us and a fantastic view.
While it was a little chilly for Florida (mostly in the 50s and 60s) we still got out in the sun.
We also had a number of "visitors" to the back porch. This is a picture of the first one. We think that all of our visitors were either cranes or herons, but we're definitely not bird experts.

Micah liked to keep an eye on the birds, from afar. Lucky for the birds, Caroline was asleep at the time of this picture. She definitely would have tried to go out and grab one.

We had a great little orchard along the back side of the house with lemons, oranges, nectarines and grapefruit all for the picking. We used the lemons a few times with our dinners. Mmm...fresh lemons.

We also discovered that one of the palm trees right off the back porch had coconuts on it. My brother-in-law Mike helped Micah get one of the green ones down.

Even though Caroline was under the weather for the first few days, she still was able to enjoy to the vacation. Here she is with her Dad standing on the back porch.

The view was great, but she was much more interested in exploring.

She was very intrigued by all of the rocks that were just off the porch and wanted to check them out one by one.

Luckily she didn't seem to be too excited about trying to run off the dock and into the water. Whew.

We were also able to take these great four seater "buggy" bikes for a ride. My sister got this hysterical picture (Caroline was NOT pleased about having to wear a helmet.)

Here's a cute picture of Micah and my sister Laurie taking in the view.
We were also able to see my great-uncle Bill on Tuesday. With a little help from a lamp (which makes an excellent tripod by the way) my sister got this family picture.
We also introduced Caroline to her great-grandfather, known in our family as Gramps (my paternal grandfather). His 88th birthday was while we were in Florida, so we took him out to lunch. My mom snapped this picture as we were getting ready to head out.

Caroline got her first experience with big sandy beaches and the gulf coast. We put her hands and feet in the rather brisk water. She wasn't impressed. But, she did think that sand was a little interesting.

Here's our parting shot of her walking on the beach.