Visitors!

We had visitors all last week.  Darren's sister and her husband, Erica and Mike came from Utah, and his other sister, Rachael, came from Massachusetts to visit for a week.  We had a great time- and the week just flew by so fast!

 They flew in on Saturday, so that night we watched the BYU game.  Sunday we went to church, took much needed naps, and then went to Vanderbilt Beach to watch the sunset. 

Monday we got up and headed to one of our favorite spots- Shark Tooth Beach! Actually it's called Caspersen Beach in Venice, but we just call it Shark Tooth.   We stayed the whole day and had a fantastic time.
 My favorite was actually the snorkeling.  There were a bunch of rocks going out from shore and so Rachie and I snorkeled around them.  It was pretty dang good snorkeling for not being a living coral reef.  We saw a bunch of fish! All sorts of shapes and colors and sizes. We saw some good sized Tarpon, probably 4 or 5 feet. a bunch of striped Sheep-heads.  A Parrot fish, an Angel fish.  A school of Grunt fish.  Darren and the girls saw a white stingray that was huge.  I couldn't believe all the fish we saw- it was amazing!

Here is the drive to Caspersen Beach- I always feel like we are in a different country. Love it!

The water was gorgeous.

Almost there!

AHHH! Gabe couldn't wait to roll around in the sand!  At least he doesn't eat it by the handful anymore.

Then he put on Darrens hat and walked around being absolutely adorable.

See?!!

I love my kids!!

As we pulled up to the beach and were unloading stuff I noticed a huge bag of lollipops.  I never buy candy like that for my kids.  So I was like- "Where did this come from?! Put that back! No way!"  I had visions on dentist trips flash before my eyes and kids saying things like "I''m not hungry for dinner".  I tried to not let them bring the suckers, but Erica had bought them, and everyone else wanted them so in the end, I lost. It was futile, I had to let the Aunts spoil my kids!  The rest of the day was a battle of Gabe insisting on always having a lollipop in each hand, dropping one in the sand, then having a  temper tantrum till he got another one.  Trying to reason with him and saying things like, "Hey, you already have one! Look, in that hand, right there, you don't need another one! Eat the one you have first!  You have already dropped 7 in the sand! I washed it off, it doesn't have sand on it anymore! "  made no difference.  In the end everyone else ended up eating lollipops as fast as they could cause Gabe started wanting the ones in other people mouths.  I guess it tastes better than the ones covered in sand! er I mean, previously covered in sand, but washed off.

Oh what the heck.  Look at that face.  Give him whatever he wants.

Rachie and Erica

Darren was full boar on Shark tooth hunting!  We found our best ones yet!

Darren would scoop up piles of sand and dump them in everyone's sifters.  

The Master at work.

Rachie and Ellie with a sifter full.  Typically we found 1 or 2 teeth per sifter.

Can't go to the beach without burying someone!

Erica and Mike

Rachie and Paul

Erica and Paul. Someone hijacked my camera. I didn't take any of these pictures-but I like them! 

We built sand castles, or shall we say, sand pyramids?

We buried Kyle and put a ton of sand on top.  We challenged him to try and get out.  He did it, but it took him a while!

You can do it Kyle!

Here's what he looked like after. LOL

I'll just call the doctor right now to make an appointment to get that sand out of your ear.

We had an awesome time snorkeling for sand dollars and seashells!  You have to go off shore a little ways to find the sand dollars.   The coolest thing EVER happened while we were snorkeling.  Erica, Mike and I were out snorkeling about 75 feet from shore, the water was about 10 feet deep- but we could see the bottom- when I heard Darren on the beach yelling, "Dolphin! Dolphin! Right by you guys!" I frantically looked around in the water, then I looked above the water, then under the water again, when I saw about a dolphin about 6 or 7 feet away swim right between me and Mike!  It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever seen!  I wanted the dolphin to come swim with me so bad- but it didn't, it just swam away.  That's ok, it was awesome to see it.  Poor Mike didn't see the dolphin because his back was towards it:(

Ellie found this cool dead Puffer fish that stunk really bad.

Everyone refused to let me bring the stinky puffer fish home.  So I told them I would throw it away.  I sneakly put it in a plastic bag and hid it in the back of the car.  Paul needs it for his science collection! It is currently outside still stinking it up.

Good Bye Shark Tooth beach.  Thank you for one of the best beach days in the history of ever!

On the way home I took some pictures of these fun statues that are around the town of Venice. 

Kind of reminds me of the moose statues in Jackson Hole.  Only dolphins and turtles in Florida.

This is a piece of a very rare Lions Paw Shell that we found.  The kids and I were so excited to find it! You probably don't care, but I do, and well, it's my blog:)

Here's some of the Booty!

Some fun shells we found-Ceriths and Augers and Sea Glass on the right.  That is the first Sea Glass I have ever found! FANGLASTIC!

A beautiful Lightning Welk.

We found these 2 really cool Leopard Crab Shells.  Gabe broke them both into pieces:(

Here is our shark tooth collection so far.  We have a lot more than this- but these are the biggest ones.

And these are ALL ones we found in one day.  See those 3 at the bottom? Those are the biggest ones ever! Rachie, Erica, and I all found one of the biggies.  The rest are all pretty awesome too.

Well, we had an incredible beach day.  We kept the sunscreen on thick so no one got burned- which is always a plus when you have a whole week of beach days left.  Stay tuned for more:)