Florida, Part 2

As mentioned in the previous post, we arrived at Larry's house in Rotonda West late Sunday night.  On Monday morning, we went out for breakfast and then grocery shopping to stock up for our stay.  The rest of the day was spent swimming in the pool and hanging out at the house.  Parker did not nap that day.  This has been happening lately, she just won't go to sleep in the middle of the day.  Sometimes the evenings go OK, sometimes not so much.  Our plan for Monday night was to drive out to Boca Grande to have dinner at Miller's Dockside.  The drive is about 20 minutes and of course Parker fell sleep in the car.  We stopped at a beach, wrapped her up in a blanket (still asleep) and walked out to watch the sunset.  Then we headed over for dinner. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for a private event so we had to get Parker back into the car again and that did not go over well.  A visit to a second restaurant ended before we even got inside, the Little Miss was not having it.  So we drove home, put her to bed and had ice cream for dinner.  

The rest of the week had fruitful naps and no meltdowns, so we were happy about that.  We went to the beach both Tue and Wed and Parker absolutely loved it....playing in the sand, looking for shells, jumping in the waves.

On Tuesday afternoon, we drove up to Sarasota and walked through a mangrove and let Parker play on a playground before having dinner (followed by yet more ice cream)

Wednesday evening we had dinner at Leverock's.  Parker was a little wound up but behaved very well.  She won the hearts of many of the people working there and we had a delicious meal.  Here are some other random photos/video from the trip:

Our flight on Thursday left at 3:00 so we drove up through Sarasota and stopped at the Mote Aquarium.  We saw lots of fish, sting rays you could touch, sharks in a big tank, and sea turtles up close & personal.  Our favorite exhibit was the manatees.  There were two swimming in a tank and one of them kept swimming up to us and smushing his face against the glass.  I wish I would have taken video of it, so cute.

By the jelly fish

We are so lucky to have a house to stay at in Florida like this, it was so nice to get away from the Rochester winter for a few days.  And even though Parker won't remember it, her first trip to Disney World was amazing.