In the meantime, while we continue our search for the boat, our kids stopped down for a visit.  Our girl, her husband and their boy flew in for a 10 day visit and our boy drove 26 hours, non-stop, to spend the weekend with us.  What a surprise!  We really enjoyed the visit with the whole fam down here at once.

What a handsome family we are

Did I mention we are going to have another Grandchild this year?  We are very excited!

Of course we had to take them to all the touristy spots.  So the first place we went to was Fort Myers Beach.  We hung around there the first day.  Look at this scary Pirate we ran into

Pirate

Oh, man, he was pretty scary.   He stood there like a statue and then some lady came up to him and he moved, she screamed to high heaven!  Pretty funny.  See the guy in the background to the left?  He weaves hat, bowls and stuff out of palm leaves.  Pretty cool!

They are letting the water out of Lake Okeechobee, which is in the middle of the state, as the water level us unusually high right now.  We have had an unusual amount of rain this winter and it has caused the lake to rise, so in order not to burst the dikes or the dams, they have been letting more water than normal and it is flowing into the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral area.  You can see by the color of the water

Dirty Water

that the water is pretty dirty.   I think it is dirtier than the Mississippi or any other river system we have traveled on.  The people are afraid it will scare away tourist

Lotsa bodies

But from the looks of this packed beach, I think not :).  After all, no mater what the water looks like, it is still warmer than up north!

Of course while we were there, we did a little shopping.  We found a cute hat for Gary

Captain Gary

(This is why I had to have both my kids Cesarean, hee, hee).  I think it fits the Grandson better

What a cool dud ;). We ate dinner at a place called Nervous Nellies.  They had a deck right on the water so we could watch the boats come and go.  The Grandson got a special dessert treat

But I think it scared the crap out of him :).  Us girls thought it was delicious though ;), ummm, fudge, brownies and ice cream.  Yum!