Fun in the Sun!!! Saturday and Sunday

We've had a fun two days exploring with Jimmie and Richard.  Yesterday, we ate breakfast at Truly Scrumptious and then drove over to Sanibel and Captiva.  It was really crowded, so we ended up not seeing the beaches, but it was a nice ride.  We stopped by the Ding Darling Nature Preserve, and even though the wildlife trail was closed for maintenance, we enjoyed walking through their museum.

We came back through Fort Myers and stopped BACK by Truly Scrumptious for some ice cream.  :-) When we got back to the house, Jimmie and the kids got in the water, and I had a nice little nap on the lanai, listening to the waves.  It was glorious.

We tried a new place for dinner that we found on TripAdvisor:  SouthBeach Grille.  It was DELICIOUS!!!  A little pricy, but awesome seafood (and yummy desserts!).  Matthew ordered a key lime tart and devoured it!  For dinner he ate mahimahi, ratatouille, broccoli and rice pilaf - and ate every morsel!  When he was eating his key lime tart, he was avoiding the crust, but when he finally gave in and tasted it, he liked that too!  Maddie and I shared shrimp scampi and then peanut butter pie, and Jeff ate breaded oysters (yuck!) and then a citrus creme brulee that was too die for.  Jimmie and Richard both had fish and enjoyed their dinner, too.  We were stuffed!  We came home and started a new game of Phase 10.  :-)

Today, we were going to wake up at 7am and go fishing, but when we woke up it was thundering!  Luckily the weather passed pretty quickly, and by 8am, we were on the beach getting our poles cast out.  Matthew has been SOOO anxious to fish, and we thought it would be fun to do it while Richard was here.  We've watched people catch fish on the beach the whole time we've been here, so we bought some shrimp for bait after dinner last night, and Richard and Jeff got the poles rigged up.

Not long after the Jeff cast the line out, Matthew snapped the pole back and started reeling - he caught the the first fish!  He was so excited!  We looked it up later; we think it was some some sort of mullet.  Maddie caught the next two - both catfish, one HUGE and one teeny-tiny.  Then Matthew caught a catfish.  I decided to try my hand at it, and I was surprised at how well you could feel the bites!  I quickly snagged a fish of my own.  We decided it was a LadyFish.  I was so proud of Matthew and Maddie - they both carried their bait, and they both took a fish off the hook!  While PaPa was casting back out, we saw a manatee cross in front of us, so we started following it down the beach.  It was SO exciting!!!  We saw it surface several times, and once it came VERY, VERY close to shore!  We got such a good view of it!  It was covered in barnacles, and it was huge!  What a thrill... and we also so several dolphins playing around!

By the time our manatee escapade was over, the fish had quit biting, so we came in and ate breakfast.  I made more granola last night, so we finished off the strawberries and raspberries and yogurt.  YUM!  Then we sat outside for a bit and let the kids play in the water. Then it thundered a bit, so Matthew and Maddie got out and played in the sand.  It never did rain, and the storm went around us, so we all got in the water and played for a while.  It felt so wonderful!!!

Maddie and I played a game of backgammon while we waited our turn for the showers, and once we were all ready we drove to Naples for dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse.  Matthew and Jeff and shared the Porterhouse for 2 - it was HUGE!  I'm really amazed at how much Matthew can eat these days!  He ate part of a salad, 2/3 of the huge steak, bread and his baked potato.  Then he finished part of Maddie's steak!  We call him the cleaner these days.  :-)  Our dinner was delicious.  We came home and finished our Phase 10 game and called it a day.  Jimmie and Richard leave tomorrow... it has been so much fun having them here!!