Sept 9-16, Marco Island

Last week we went to the beach on a family vacation with my parents and sisters. It was wonderful to get away from Lakeland for a while and just have some fun. We stayed on Marco Island which is down near Naples & Everglades City, my parents have a time share and we were able to take the week off and go with them. Emma is officially a "beach babe", she LOVED the beach and pool.

The pictures here are of Alex, me, and Emma the first night when we took Emma down to the beach. Marco Island is wonderful with all it's tidal pools which was great to take Emma in. She wriggled her little toes in the sand and tried to kick the water, she kept trying to sit down beacuse she wanted to play in it! Emma most enjoyed the pool. We would take her down in the mornings and evenings when the sun wasn't so hot and she would splash and splash in the water and play with her floating turtle toys. She just laughs and giggles while she splashed water so hard it went up her and my nose! One of the days we were there, we rented a pontoon boat for the day. Alex was our captain and we went out to one of the 10,000 Islands. The island that we stopped at for the morning was so much fun. The tide was going out so there were lots of shells around and it was also very shallow so Emma could play. We took the umbrella and beach chair and sat in the water with Emma between our legs. She sat and sifted the sand through her fingers and toes, dug up her first shell (the one in the picture) and of course tried to eat some of the sand too! We had a picnic for lunch and then Emma and Papa took a nap in the shade while the rest of us went exploring.