Siesta Key Beach Vacation!

Last week we took our annual beach vacation! We thought it would be easier and cheaper to stay in the country this time, so after a little bit of research, we settled on Siesta Key, Florida. It is near Sarasota, and is famous for its white fine, powdery sand. We rented a condo on the beach, talked Grandma and Grandpa Haun into coming with us to help wrangle the kids, and we were off! The flights went pretty well, except a couple of our bags for some reason took a later flight than we did. But soon we were HERE: The beach directly in front of our condo

The sand was really soft and white, and didn't get hot at all. There were also quite a few seashells on the beach, and Cora and Arden had a great time collecting them. Arden even found a shark's tooth! Here is Corbie, running up and down the beach looking for "pitty see-shews!"

The waves here were pretty mild most days, but they were still big enough for Arden and Daxton to enjoy playing in:It got kind of windy in the afternoons and the waves would get bigger, and the kids loved to make Grandpa hold onto their hands and lift them up out of the water each time a wave came in. Grandpa's arms got kind of tired though. The kids slept pretty good at the condo, which Cora liked to call "Gwampa's beach house." All three kids wanted to sleep in the same room, but Daxton and Cora just could not stop talking to each other. Arden was quickly sound asleep, but Dax and Cora were talking and giggling for hours that first night. Around 11:30 p.m. I finally moved Cora's toddler air mattress into our bathroom (which was pretty big), where she slept great the rest of the time.

My dad and I went for a few runs on the beach, and I gotta say that if I had a beach to run on, I would be out there every day. The very first morning while we were running we saw a bunch of dolphins right off shore and ran along side them for a while. How cool is that???

The sand is so fine that it is easy to make sandcastles with, and while we were there they their annual sandcastle competition at the public beach which was just about half a mile from our condo. We walked the kids down and took a look around, but we were a little early and most of the sandcastles weren't quite done yet. But they were pretty impressive anyway! Here is one under construction:
This inspired us to try our own sandcastles. We quickly found out that the hardest part about building sandcastles is keeping the various toddlers from destroying your work before you can get finished. Ours isn't as impressive as some others, but for us it was pretty good:Here is another tower that I made out of the wet sand. It sticks together so nicely! I told Dax that he could knock it over after I took a picture of it, so he dutifully stood and watied until I took a picture and gleefully knocked it down one millisecond after this shot was taken: We took a couple of day trips while we were there. We spent one day at the Mote Aquarium. They had lots of cool exhibits and even a pickled giant squid. My favorites were the manatees:

Daxton's favorite was the sharks:

Cora's favorite thing was this sign:

Arden's favorite thing was the gift shop, where she talked her dad into getting all three kids a stuffed dolphin.

After the aquarium we stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the bay. There were a bunch of birds hanging around on the dock near the restaurant. There were some pelicans and some egrets. While we were waiting for our food to come, Dax wanted to get a better look at the egret. Here is what he told me as we walked up to the bird: "Dat bird's fevvers are white. Dat bird's feet are bwack. Dad bird's eyes are yewwow. I FROW HIM IN THE WATER!!" He then ran at the bird full speed and had every intention of grabbing this bird (which was taller than him) and heaving it into the sea. Luckily for everyone involved, the bird saw him coming and took off before Dax could get his chubby little hands on him.

After another couple of days at the beach:

..and a little shuffleboard:

We drove over to Disney World and visited the Animal Kingdom for a day. It was really fun, and everyone had a good time. Dax especially loved "Dinoland" and even got to ride on a flying triceratops:

He is so big, he met the height requirement to ride on the "Dinosaur!" ride, which is a dark, Indiana Jones-style ride where you are chased around by a large, animatroinc carnivore. We considered letting him ride it, but then remembered how he hid under the table for 10 minutes last month at Chuck-E-Cheese because the animatronic mouse was too scary for him. We did take Arden on it, and she actually liked it. I think she felt brave. The animals were of course the main attraction, and Cora talked about the tiger all day long. The "Nemo" musical show was really fun too. I was a little disappointed in the "Expedition Everest" ride, because the huge scary yeti inside seemed a lot less scary than I remembered from our last visit a few years ago. I was expecting this huge hairy thing roaring and lunging at the roller coaster, but my dad didn't even SEE the yeti. Apparently he is broken, but instead of fixing him they just turned out the lights and shined a strobe light on him to "simulate movement." La-ame! Fix the yeti! Anyway...back to the beach!

We collected more shells, I caught a huge hermit crab and also found a conch, and we saw the dolphins again too. The water was perfect and warm, but unfortunately too sandy for snorkeling. Dax tried his floaters out for the first time and did really great (can't figure out how to add video yet, sorry!)

And there were some really pretty sunsets:

After a lot of relaxing and running and splashing and digging and lounging and chasing and swimming, it was time to pack up and go home. UNFORTUNATELY, our plane was delayed and we missed our connection in Atlanta. We had to spend the night at an airport hotel. Everyone was pretty tired as we waited to get our vouchers and figure out a place to stay. Arden curled up on one of the benches in the terminal to wait:

I am not good at packing carry-ons. I had my carry-on jam packed with toys and books and ipods and stickers and snacks to try and keep the kids quiet on the planes, and didn't have room for stuff like pajamas and make-up. So, we used the Delta overnight packs, which to the kids' delight contained large t-shirts that they could wear as pajamas. I wish I would have taken their pictures all dressed in these huge t-shirts and ready for bed, but I was too tired! We made our flight out the next morning just fine, and arrived back home with all of our luggage.

It was a really fun trip, and the kids (and me) are going through pretty bad beach withdrawals. Cora saw an airplane today and said this to me "I wan go airplane! I go airplane to grampa's house atta beach! I GO BEACH! I GO BEACH! Pweeeese?"

Me too, please!