Vacation Post!

Just look at this cute baby! All dressed up in his little guyebera and his white linen pants. We are staying on Siesta Key, in Sarasota, Florida. Siesta Key has the whitest sand beaches in the world. Seriously. They won a contest. Want to see the view from the Lanai? Here you go...



There is a hot tub off to the side that you can't see in the picture. I love a hot tub. I soaked it that hot tub.
The condo building is almost empty. Almost no one comes to Florida in August (maybe because of hurricanes?) so we have the whole place pretty much to ourselves! Aunt Patti was so sweet to invite us down to share her vacation.
We are on the fifth floor. The condo has everything, gourmet kitchen, big screen teevees, two bathrooms, washer and dryer, shower massage, huge Lanai (porch-type space with enormous windows overlooking the ocean). Sprout and I are sharing a room with my mom and Aunt Patti has the other bedroom. Every morning we get up and have breakfast on the Lanai. We then go for a walk on the beach. When we come back, we sit in the shade of the cabana for a while and watch the waves come in and out. Sometimes we look for shells and creatures. We usually go have lunch in the condo, and then come back down for a bit of swimming.



Aunt Patti, Mom and Sprout on the beach! Yes, my mother actually went in the ocean. I am very proud of her.



This is a sea turtle nest. We saw this on one of our walks. There is a team of volunteers who come out every morning before dawn and check for nests.
When they find one, they rope it off, call in the scientists and preservationists who make their observations and take all sorts of notes and measurements. The turtles are an endangered species and there is a huge fine for disturbing the nests. There are posters all over the Key about turning off your lights at night so the baby sea turtles don't get confused when they hatch. If there is too much light coming from the buildings, it drowns out the natural glow of th gulf, and the turtles head the wrong way on the beach. They don't make it to the ocean by morning and die. Terrible. The staff at the condo office comes down to the beach every evening and folds up the beach furniture, moves it out of the way and cleans up any toys, junk or debris left by the guests, so the turtles have no obstacles to climb over in order to make it to the water. I am impressed with the efforts everyone is makin to help these creatures come back from the brink of extinction.
Thus ends our science lesson.

We are having such a great time, check out my flickr page (link is in the sidebar) for more photos.