Klay Family: Ahhhh, Captiva!

After a long winter, we were ready for our annual trip to Captiva! This was Mommy's 27th year vacationing at South Seas on Captiva Island (she has missed some years due to her teaching schedule), but we have been fortunate to go consecutively for 5 years now (thanks to Heather, Mommy's teaching partner). We were ready for the beach, pool, shelling, trolley rides, and of course, time with family!

Uncle Jim is a kid in a grown-up body. He taught Cooper and I how to capture crabs and lizards in our nets. This entirely freaked my Mom out the entire week :)

And we (and cousin Sam) even handled our friends, the sand crabs....

Our first day, was spent on the beach. We were busy going in and out of the ocean, creating masterpieces in the sand, and our parents smiled as they were able to SIT and even enjoy a daiquiri or colada from a few feet away!

We didn't spend a lot of time in the villa, besides the usual breakfast and evening gathering before sunset. We loved seeing our many cousins on Captiva. There were 25 of us (in various condos/villas) on the resort, so we had a lot of family time.

Sunsets were limited this year. We had a nice one our first night, but many evenings clouded over. The weather was overall perfect while we were there. The temperatures were in the low 80's and it was mostly sunny. We wish we would have seen more sunsets in the evenings and were sure to catch them if we were blessed enough to have one.

Captiva Island is known for shelling. It is almost a must to have sandals on while walking down to the beach because of the amount of shells on the white sands. Our morning routine included a beach walk, shelling and then we would stop at the golf course to see the Dads on the course. The rest of our day was either beach or pool... such a difficult decision!

On our last day, Mommy found a baby sand dollar mixed in with shells. This is her greatest find to-date (the sand dollar was whole and adorably small).

I wanted to take every shell off the beach home with us. We managed just a small shelling bag to add to my night stand collection.

Cooper mostly scooped and dumped his shells.

Papa and Grandma Sharon winter in Fort Myers and Captiva during the winter months.... can you tell by their complexion?!?!? They came for a beach day and dinner at one of our favorites, the Bubble Room.

Cooper wanted to eat some of Papa's duck during dinner and what do you know, he loved it!

Captiva has the BEST desserts (key lime pie in particular)

This year, we had dinner at a restaurant 4 out of 6 nights, a new record! Going to restaurants is a lot easier now that Cooper and I can actually sit for a few minutes :) We loved having this work this year because we love so many restaurants in the area. One night, we even met up with another couple that Mom/Dad went to college with along with their four kids... it was fun!

The parents had date night one evening and attempted a group selfie; they need to get out more often.

Back to sunset and family pictures!

With all the fun in the sun, we had no problems falling asleep at night. Cooper was dragging by the time the sun went down.

Cooper and I love to ride the island's main mode of transportation, the trolley. At night, we would ride the trolley back from the ice cream parlor and by day, it took us all around the resort. In the front, next to the driver, is a special seat (see above). We felt like co-captains in this seat and we were always very excited if the seat was available for us to sit in.