A Prom Dress, Some Shells and a Bunch of Manatees

So a few action packed days have just concluded with the departure of my friends from Mississauga. LSNBMNHM came for just a few days of sun. HM also known as The Godkid (GK from here on) had a quest while in Florida.
Buy a prom dress.
This is important for Grade 8 graduation.
This is the beginning of teenage hood as we know it.
It's also important as GK has a friend of the boy kind that is very sweet to her.
Gotta look your best ya know.

The GK parents needed to get away from all that is normal work, life and craziness that is their life. A few days in paradise is just what they needed.

This is BM, 15 minutes after arriving at the house. A total of 1 hour after landing at Ft. Myers' airport.
You'll note his pasty whiteness.
This was replaced by a pretty good tan in just a few days.
What you can't see is the beverage, in a thermal glass.
It was the second thing he did, after getting on the bathing suit, before getting in the pool.
No point wasting time....

I had researched things for us to do, with their limited time here, and had a perfect agenda that could be modified if need be.

First stop would be the fancy schmancy dress shop for GK to get her dress. Monday morning we were off and running early to the mall. With March Break on, not only for some Canadians it's also March Break for the school counties around here. I figured it would be a zoo. 
Wrong.
Crickets were chirping in the fountains when we arrived. At 10 am!
No matter, we had a quest.
Dazzle Too had a lot of selection and GK had fun trying on different looks.
2 favourites emerged and 1 was decided on. We put a hold on it while Macy's was checked out and a couple of other stores were too. The decision had been made.

No, there are no pictures of the dress as it is under wraps until the June event but I can tell you it's a lovely teal colour with beading on the front that makes her look lovely.
Ah to be 14 and have a size 2 body.
Wait...
I don't think I was ever a size 2 but yes, I was 14, many, many years ago. Ho hum....

The Port Charlotte mall was a boon for all, things were found and new things added to the lists. LS and I decided we'd go back in the afternoon. BM and GK wanted to lie by the pool and read.
But first!
Chubbyz wings.
Ya know, there weren't a whole lot of people enjoying the wing thing at 12:30 on a Monday afternoon. This is the time to go. Wings are still awesome!

Remember the pasty whiteness the new rookies displayed. Well, after an afternoon by the pool.....

 Aloe, cucumber cooling cream helped out.
Ah, yeah, I'm not sure sunscreen was applied at the onset but I'm not gonna say anything more.

I had to include a visit to the beach in their travels. Boca Grande was my favourite place so why not go there with a picnic and call it a day.
Off we went.
Sun screen was applied before we even left the house this time with more packed away. Towels, picnic lunch packed in the cooler, shell collecting bag and chairs crammed in the beloved Equinox and off we went.

Arrived around 10:30am to a lovely blue sky, lovely blue water and no waves. Right on.
My point and shoot camera doesn't do it justice and I hope BM's fancy schmancy camera really captured it all.

What was really cool were the Manatees. Yup, the sea cows were hanging out here today.
I didn't get a picture because a) they look like huge black blobs swimming under the surface until they come up for air and b) if you're really patient and have a really fast camera you can catch them doing that.
Since I don't have the fast camera I was oh so intent on just sitting and watching them move through the water and dive and rise for air. Soooo awesome.
Right, if manatees are also called sea cows does that mean when there are a bunch of them swimming around they're known as a herd?? Hmmmm. Have to look that up.
I digress....(or as The Man says, gone on a tangent...sorry).

This was my perch. The wind storms we've had recently have left a cliff of sand. Our stuff was parked on top of one of these cliffs (about 6 feet tall) and I could over see the ocean.

Note the lack of persons. Yeah, yeah, this is one of my shoe/foot shots to add to the collection. Not a cloud in the sky...Ahhhh

The group went off shelling. I held the fort at our perch. Many more manatees were seen by the visitors, many shells collected and they came back from their hour long jaunt on the beach to sandwiches and cold drinks. The beach had certainly filled up by then.

The official shell collecting bag had a substantial number of shells in it for drying at home.

We also had a little dude visit us. I don't know if he was looking for a hand out but boy could he move fast.

If you look carefully you can see Casper, the ghost crab. He was hanging around the cooler then took off when we starting moving around. BM nearly stepped on him, not knowing he was there. Casper was well camoflaged. Neat.

Afternoon at the beach done it was time to head home and the line up of traffic waiting to get in to the parking area at the beach was crazy! I'm so glad we arrived when we did.
Before home there was a trip to.....

DAIRY QUEEN!
Oh yeah, not quite the same as wearing mitts and touque on Victoria Day weekend in Sauble as we slurp our traditional Blizzards or peanut buster parfaits but it was the same stuff! My Heath Bar (think Crispy Crunch and Skor bar mixed together) Blizzard was awesome and LS was much excited to see the Banana Cream Pie Blizzard on the menu. BM did not stray from his usual Peanut Buster ("I have to try it in another country don'tcha know") and HM silently faceplanted in her chocolate icecream blizzard thingy and loved every second of it.

Tired from the sun and surf, and full of DQ we lazed around for the rest of the afternoon.

Up early on the final day of their visit it was off to Fisherman's Village for the shopping and sight seeing there. A few nifty things purchased (like light changing nail polish) and we headed home for lunch.
Getting anywhere during March Break should be done earlier rather than later. Places get packed around noon hour. We got out before it got nuts.

Off to the airport one final time for me and got the now not pasty white visitors checked in and ready to go. All with books in hand, snacks packed and looking forward to a longer snooze (LS didn't get a long one in the car to the airport) it was just a short wait until the boarding started.
Back to reality they went.
It was a fun visit and kind of surreal to have friends that I usually hang with in Southampton around the campfire or on the cottage porch to be hanging by the pool here. It was nice to have the company too.

Notables from the visit of LSNBMNHM, with my replies in brackets...

--"just got another purple bag for MW's trumpet squelchy things"...(huh?)
--"the air's cold when you come out of the pool"...(Yikes!!! LS hadn't overheaded yet)
--"the dress won't get squished will it?" (we test drove the packing of said dress)
--"socks, I need white socks, new white socks"...(BM had a quest too)
--"you mean Stella only costs that much down here?" (Oh yeah baby, and it wasn't even happy hour)
--"it's soooo quiet at 7 am while I'm doing my Tai Chi" (I don't think I've seen 7 am while I've been here)
--"noooo, I'm nearly out of Coke, what's a man to do?"... (I bought more, problem solved)
--"ahhhhh this is awesome..." (yes, it is!)

For right now it's back to my quiet world. I'm actually starting to think about how I'm going to pack all the things up in 3 weeks. I have my time in Memphis booked but not the rest of it.

I have one more set of visitors planned but don't know their time of arrival exactly. They'll have their own car and thus will travel around more on their own. I really think that Fisherman's Village and the airport have seen the last of me. I do like those places but I'm done there. The Mall and any beach I will happily visit again. I have to pick up some of those thermal glasses we've been using and I can sit by the ocean shore for hours. We'll see what they want to do. Then I have a couple of weeks on my own to do a few things then it's on the road again.
I do sort of miss home, I was even watching the Leafs play the Tampa Bay Lightening last night on TV which kind of brought me back to reality. Though the commentary was all Tampa Bay they did refer to things I knew from home. Started me thinking of TO and Southampton.
Ho hum....

But for now, it's 82 F or 28C out, the sun is shining (as it has been every day but three of them since I got here) and there is a nice breeze from the east. The bottle brush tree is really blooming and the mocking birds have built a nest nearby which makes for a continuous sing song warble all day and into the night. It's all good.

                                             Bottle brush tree going berzerk! Very pretty!

The hibiscus plant that hasn't stopped blooming since I arrived is STILL going nuts. Wow!

So the weather report is actually calling for thunderstorms today. Guess I'll keep my eye out for those. Weather has been super nice down here and I know that the storms up north of here have been brutal. A tornado in Michigan last night?? What's up with that. I see the temp in Southampton is supposed to be 20C on Saturday. Huh??? Break out the shorts man! Weird. It has been record warm down here too and the lack of rain is worrying some folks.
We can't change the weather, we can only watch it and see what happens. I'm prepared down here for anything. Emergency pack ready to go. Yeah, yeah, I'm a Girl Guide, can't ya tell?

But for now I'll go back to my pool side perch with a book and enjoy what the weather is giving me right now.
Nice.

Until later....