By the Sea By the Sea By the Beautiful Sea

Whew. Where to begin? I'm back home after a week of vacation and am drowning in photos....graduation photos and beach photos both. Wait, don't go...I'm not going to post them all. I can't promise you I won't post any but I for sure will not post all. That's mostly because I have a lot of pics of my girls on the beach in their oh so cute bikinis but it doesn't feel right to me to put those out in the blogosphere. There are also a few of me in my swim suit which I guarantee you will not be going on the world wide web for altogether other reasons, so you can relax now.

We wrapped up the graduation celebrations late Saturday night and flew to Florida Sunday morning. Marco Island is just south of Naples and is one of our favorite family vacation spots. We've been there many times and its a special place for us...we all have lots of happy memories from holidays in Marco. Here is the view from our balcony-

I tried to talk my hubs into retiring straight away but then he reminded me that we still have one in university and we have a house we're still settling into in a state far far far away from this little slice of heaven and btw, he's not quite old enough or even ready to retire just yet. We both love the water though so someday. Do you see how easily sidetracked I am?

With another school year winding down and hubs travel schedule getting ready to go into overdrive we all wanted a vacation somewhere we could put our toes in the sand...

read lots of books...

talk for hours

eat fantastic seafood

wonder at the beauty of a sunset on the Gulf

and reconnect as a family.

Marco is just such a place. Most mornings hubs and I would walk to the point and look for shells. The beach is literally covered in shells but there are a couple of places where piles are dumped by the sea and we especially like to hunt in those spots.

Of course hubs is not content to pick up some of the billions of shells sitting in plain sight...he must climb out and over the rocks to get what? Better shells?

Dolphins love to play at this end of the island and early morning is a good time to see them.

We did a fun wave runner tour one day which I think I'll save for part 2. Yes patient readers...there's more. I'm sure you can hardly wait because we all know how much fun it is to see other people's vacation photos. I've been working away at my scrapbooking backlog but that is s-l-o-w going and I've got a ways to go before I catch up to present day. In the meantime my blog has become a good place to record
every random thought I havewhat is happening in my life as I live it. Blogging helps me hit the pause button for a minute...to see the specialness not only in life's big moments like a university graduation, but also in life's little moments. Like a walk on the beach.

One day you are walking on the beach with your little chicks...

and before you know it...

you are walking on the beach with your little chicks.

Sometimes the little moments are the big moments.