Tales from Mommy Merrill: Hermine who?????

One of the only perks about Ronnie's hectic travel schedule is that he gets to accumlate LOTS AND LOTS of Marriott hotel points -- which we horde all year in order to spend 4 days in Marco Island at this amazing resort over Labor Day weekend! Ronnie and I started going down there the year we were engaged and have gone 2 other times since (we skipped the years the kids were itty bitty babies). It's one of our favorite weekend of the year because it is like the grand finalie to summer and it welcomes fall -- football, baseball playoffs, pumpkin spice lattes and hopes for cooler temps in the next coming months. It's a celebration!

I have been looking forward to this year's trip pretty much all year - and especially this summer when Ronnie was gone. However, mother nature decided to give us a run for our money in the final days before the trip. Tropical Storm Hermine started spinning in the gulf the weekend before we were supposed to leave and landfall was expected the day were leaving.

The good thing (if you can imagine for a minute that this is good) was that the largest part of the storm was headed to Tampa, not to south Florida where we were traveling (Marco Island is about 3 hours from here and just south of Naples). We live inland enough that we were confident that really all we would get at home would be lots and lots of rain and some wind (and a VERY long weekend indoors). So, Ronnie took charge and on Thursday morning he said - let's pack up and get down there! So we ran the kids over to Grandma and Grandpa's for a couple hours while we packed and then off we went!

And thankfully so, because we barely saw ANY rain and the weather was gorgeous! Thursday afternoon (pick below in the background) you can see some wind and overcast but that was the worst of it.

Mom - really. Enough with the pictures.

Oh, I'm ready for the pool... but first I'm going to play on this bed and make you catch me!

Drew - we're here!!!!!

Long car ride, some pool time and fun on the beach after dinner = falling asleep sitting up.

Morning stroll on the beach -- these were some of our favorite times of the day!

Drew and Reese are starting to play together so good! Makes our hearts smile :-)

But.... she is a stinker. "Hmm, I'm thinking about knocking Drew's castle over."

Mission accomplished.

I'm outta here!

Lesson from Daddy. "No Reese, you can't just go around knocking over people sand castles. We have to fix it now."

Drew learned about conch on this trip and was listening to the ocean in the shells. "Hello? Ocean, are you there?" There were so many beautiful conch shells on the beach this year - it was really amazing.