March 06th, 2017

I'm back!  How was your week?  I hope you had a good one and I look forward to hearing about it. Did you miss me? If you recall, I took the week off because youngest son, Hurley and his wife Jessie came to visit. We had so much fun with these two...

We did fun stuff with them every day of their visit, or maybe just doing anything with them is fun (or both) because we are still smiling. 

We started their visit out locally, just showing them our new home, new town and of course the beach. We did spend a lot of time on the beach. But then, I suspect that  there are few folks who would opt out when the beach is so close!  Jessie was more about, as she put it, "getting her tan on" and Hurley immediately was in the water. 

But we all did spent time doing both sand and water and even did some serious watching as the waves crashed and the dolphins danced and found some perfect shells (one still occupied by a hermit crab - that one ultimately went back into the sea).  And of course, we watched the sunsets.

I didn't get in the water or sunbath. Mostly I made beach art.   Just two.

We also went to a local festival, just because it was happening and why not?  Ate some carnival food, listened to the music of purple garbed doo-wop singers, walked around and watched Hurley climb a rock wall and ride a mechanical bull. Yes he did!

Of necessity we spent a lot of time in the car. One day, at their request, we drove down to Ft Meyers to check out the outlets.  It was both the biggest and  the prettiest outlet mall I've ever seen filled with fountains, little garden areas and to my delighted surprise their were musicians and singer here and there. Quite nice.  We all did some shopping. Even Tim and I.  The kids had us beat by a mile on that score though.  They found some great deals on stuff they needed.

Jessie cooked for us one night.  That girl is an amazing cook!  We headed first to our local Farm Market, Detwilers, to purchase ingredients (and any trip to Detwilers is fun on it's own)  and then when we got back she got to work.  She made the prettiest and most unique coleslaw I've ever had and pulled chicken sandwiches that had garlic cloves slow cooked in these little slits she cut into the meat (so good) and then made, (I hope I spell this correctly) tostones which is a twice fried plantain. The photos are probably making you drool.  Good!

We did a number of fun local things.  For instance we visited an Exotic Car Museum where there are some famous vehicles on display like the Delorean from "Back to the Future" and the Mystery Machine from "Scooby Doo". There was also a Batmobile and a landcruiser from Star Wars amoung others.

And we each chose our favourite vehicle that when we win the lottery, we will buy for each other. Hey, it will happen. We promised!

Also played mini-golf with alligators!  Not as dangerous as it sounds.  There is a placed called Smugglers Cover that has a group (gang? mass? covey?) of alligators but they are off by themselves safely away from mini-golfers and only there to be admired. We played all 18 holes.  Hurley even got a hole-in-one. 

Some nights we stayed home and worked on jigsaw puzzles. Seriously I think we did 3 different ones during the visit.  Another night was about old memories while perusing photo albums and two different times, we went to the beach late at night, in that special oceany kind of darkness to stargaze. That was awesome.  Jessie said that she had never seen so many stars before.  Thanks to phone apps, we even knew what we were looking at. 

And of course we did the big parks. Of course!  Isn't that the entire reason most people visit Florida?  But you know what?  This is starting to be a really long post so I think I will continue to tale tomorrow.  Stay tuned for the rest of the story and yet more photographs tomorrow!

Hope to see you then!