Amelia Island Vacation 2011

The past week has been spent in one of my favorite places in the whole world with my favorite people in the whole world.

For the past 7 days, we have been off the mainland of the United States on Amelia Island. Eric & I visited 12 years ago for our 2^nd wedding anniversary and for the past 4 years, we have taken our children there for our annual family vacation. We know the locations of all the good restaurants, the places we like to shop, and where to get ice cream for dessert every night.

Amelia Island is not commercialized and the sea life is evident. We found 4 sea turtle nests in the area of the beach where we were staying.   Sadly, we even saw a dead sea turtle on the beach, along with 41 jelly fish (these were spread over a 1.5 mile area of the beach).

One of my very favorite things to do is read and sit on the beach.  So doing them at the same time is nearly heaven on earth.  Here are the 7 books that I finished reading while at the beach - I admit, I started Austen's Persuasion the day before we left and I did start another book that I got about halfway finished before we got home (which is not pictured because I have not finished it).  Still, 7.5 books in 8 days is pretty good and a new record for me.

We were lucky to see a Nuclear Submarine heading into port/ base at Kingsland, Georgia. You can't see all of the other boats and helicopter escorting it up the St. Marys River. It was an awesome site that Eric and I enjoyed. We tried to explain to the kids how special and rare it was to see this, but I don't think they believed us.

Here are the "Annual" photo ops on Amelia Island – one at the big anchor by one of our favorite restaurants, another with Peg Leg downtown (across the street from the big anchor), and the last showing off our skills as hockey, I mean, mini golf players.

This was our view this morning as we walked to the ocean. I always love watching the pelicans dive – you can see two in this picture. Yes, it is the black blobs right above the water.

And here are my beach bum children. They humor me by telling the beach, the island, Florida, and Georgia goodbye as we drive home. They wish (just like we do) that we could just buy a beach house on Amelia Island and maybe even live there. So here are to this year's lovely memories and yes, we are already looking forward to next year when we will leave the mainland for another week and enjoy the island.