Oceans of Fun

I can't believe it's been two weeks since a post, and even though our trip to Florida is sort of an excuse, I remember when I first started blogging how I sometimes wrote more than once a week!
So, here is the summary: Eric and I took the kids to Englewood, Florida (about 1.5 hours south of Tampa on the Gulf) to visit my 91-year-old grandpa. He is still doing great! He lives on his own in a house that is about a 5 minute walk from the ocean (and actually a 30 second walk to a inlet canal across the street where Eric and I launched the canoe one evening to view the sunset).
The weather was actually a little hot and sticky when we got there, but the warm temperature provided nice weather for ocean swimming. Elia loved the ocean:

But Ethan wasn't so fond of the cold water. He preferred the sand (and eating it).
And the views were spectacular. We were joined by Grampy and YaYa (which, for all you who are wondering, is "grandma" in Greek).They flew down from New Hampshire. Elia loved making pancakes with grampy (a tradition for every visit) and playing in the water:
It was really a true vacation. We did very little traveling, just a 5 - 10 minute drive to different beaches. Elia of course loved the sand and the beach. She loved jumping over the waves and search for treasures on our beachcombing excursions. Her grampy found a dead crab (which she quickly took ownership of as she exclaimed, "Look what I found!" She carried the crab body for almost a mile down the beach and was convinced that she needed to take it home, but we finally talked her into feeding it to a great blue heron in exchange for a purple shell. She is very into starfish and though we didn't find any on the beach, we went to a shell shop and picked one up for her (see hand below). She now talks of nothing else! If you ask her, she'll tell you that the starfish was her favorite part of the trip. We're sure visiting Grampy and YaYa was right up there too! :)At the end of our trip, the kids and I adorned ourselves with alligator tatoos (Elia's idea). We had gone to a nearby state park and seen some real ones:One last picture. Everyone got a kick out of the fact that Ethan slept in the garage. Hey, if it works, why not? He actually took some of the best naps he's ever taken and his breathing returned to almost completely normal while we were in Florida! For now, we don't have to use the breathing machine anymore. Hooray for everyone!