Back from vacation in one piece

Sitting on the beach in the dark reading a book with my headlamp on and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see a sea monster that has come to kill me and drag me off to the sea monster baby nest so I can be shared. I jumped, my heart skipped a beat and then I discovered it was a tackle box and the shadow of my own foot. True story. Then I look up and notice I'm alone, the 3 guys that were with me left and went way down to the other end of the beach without telling me, or they may have told me and I completely blocked them out (I was blessed with the man gene that allows them to block out women when they are talking except in reverse, I have a bad habit of blocking out men and women and pretty much anyone that is talking to me especially when I get distracted by anything that moves or is sparkly. (Or it could be because I'm a really fast listener or be because I have the attention span of a grape). 

Totally me

I have a few rules in my "Denise rule book" I don't go into the ocean because I can't swim, well I can swim a tiny little bit, almost. I'm not scared of the water, I'm mostly scared of drowning in it or being eaten by something in it. I also don't usually turn my back to the ocean while I'm shell or sharks tooth hunting because I'm scared something will sneak up and grab me and drag me off to eat me, or because I've seen way too many scary movies, whichever. These are real fears of mine and I don't do swimming pools unless I can touch bottom. Well guess what, I totally swam in the ocean, well I snorkeled and swam, only had 15-20 mini panic attacks. I worked through it and swam! Better yet I found treasure! Sort of. I went snorkeling for sand dollars and I hit big time, it was awesome. I had an odd little fish stalk me for over an hour, it would just swim around me and check me out which made me nervous as all heck because I had the feeling he was all like 'here she is sharky... come get her'. Then I started to worry because I was pretty sure I was gonna get stabbed in the heart by a sting ray and they were basically laying on the floor of the ocean like IED's waiting for me to pass over them when I was snorkeling.

Notice the barb halfway up his tail, my brother caught this on his fishing line, I made/begged him to free it and he'll forever hold it against me :)

It didn't help that my brother caught a sting ray the day before (the one in the picture above is the one he caught and released) and you know that's  what killed Steve Irwin. I'm an ocean accident waiting to happen. So after the whole sea monster shadowy thing I'm like damn it! I should have a glass of wine, but at that point I'm so paranoid and freaked out about something that may or may not try to get me that I'm too scared to go up to the condo to get a glass. This is exactly why I should have a cabana boy.
So now that I have all that out of the way, my vacation was spectacular. I was on an island accessible only by boat for 7 days and nights, I was on the beach every night until 3-4am, I fished, I swam (for real! I totally swam, it was awesomely terrifying) I collected lots of shells, sand dollars and sharks teeth.

 I saw a manatee and 2 sea turtles that came up on the beach to lay eggs (which I stayed away from until after she laid her eggs and she was heading back to the water, then I took a few quick shots with my cell phone (no flash photography only a dimly lit head lamp because I didn't want to stress her out).

She was HUGE and absolutely gorgeous. 

umm what else? Oh I fed a great blue heron whom I named Uncle Melvin because he was all weird and shifty like I think an Uncle Melvin would be. 

Uncle Melvin (you have to admit, he looks a bit shifty)

I visited my mom (who lives like 30 minutes away from where I was) and I relaxed, I laid on the beach and got some sun and I had almost no cell phone coverage  at all. It was fabulous.

I thought these crabs were pretty

He was totally casing my shells or my shoe.

I've never seen a pompano (the fish picture below) before, so of course I had to play with it and torment my husband. (the fish was dead, which doesn't make playing with it any better but I think a live fish would have been freaked out being up that high. By the way, I don't like seafood so of course I didn't eat him. My husband, son and brother did though. Poor fishy.)

Hey uhhh buddy uhhh whatcha doing? 

My niece Taylor and I while visiting my momma, I look delirious, but I like this picture,  mostly because she looks like me and that pisses my sister off haha!  

Oh and the hat I'm wearing is hiding a big knot on my forehead, I walked into a large wooden beam and damn near knocked myself out before I went to my momma's house, maybe that's why I look delirious, it's just my concussion.