Florida

Jason had work in Jacksonville Florida, so we decided to go see him

during the last week of his trip. We asked my parents to come with us, 

since it's only about 5 hours from their house. They also had our niece 

Megan visiting, so we had a fun 3 days in Florida. I've never been, and it was 

so fun to see it for the first time!

the boys are getting good at traveling!

almost there!

the beach! it was so beautiful!

my parents and megan arrived, and we went to dinner

chase is at that age where he REALLY misses Jason when he leaves for work....

and he doesn't want anything to do with me once we see Jason again. it's the cutest....

the next day we went fishing on jacksonville pier and swimming at the beach

grandpa brought the poles and bought bait and helped us do everything. it was super great of

him to have everything - we just showed up and fished. 

he's incredible. the boys had such a good time!

we kept seeing these huge schools of stingrays under the pier....one fisherman caught one!

grant caught a shark! we had a few people come over to see it. a baby one.

i love chase's face in this picture....

grant was super patient. once chase caught one, helost interest and went with
everyone else to the beach to swim, but grant didn't count catching the
shark as a fish, so he kept fishing until he caught a real fish. it was fun for him
to have time with grandpa.

he did it! (doesn't he look SO exited?)

since grandpa couldn't get wet because of a medical condition, he had jason and megan

seine and we got to see what was in the surf. it was scary how many things we caught, that

you don't know are swimming right there with you! we amassed quite a large crowd, and it was

fun to see how many people were so interested and impressed with grandpa and his knowledge.

we caught this fish and the boys played with it forever. poor fish....

the next day we went on a shrimp troller at amelia island. 

it was fun to get a tour of the area, learn about shrimping practices, and they 

even had a biologist on board (two but they didn't know it! ahahah!) anyway, they 

also put a net in and showed us local shrimp and fish and talked about them.

we got to see quite a few dolphins! that was fun.

the kids got to help pull in the net....

they let some kids help. grant was right up front asking to help and offering his services. 

it was so cute. this is the kind of thing he loves to do.

chase's face kills me. this is not really his thing, and he was hot and sooo hungry. 

later we went to the beach in the evening to relax on our last night. this was such a nice

secluded beach, right down the street from the pier. we seined some more and had fun 

body surfing, and just enjoyed the night.