Thanksgiving at North Captiva Island

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving on North Captiva Island. We rented 2 beautiful houses and filled them up with family. House #1 - Key Lime High was the kids' house. The Mueller family, the Parrot family, and cousins Tom and Jim stayed in this very cool house. The feature was our pool and bar area. House #2 - Crew's Nest was the adults' house, located across the street. This luxurious house was where Mom and Dad, Grandma Carol and Fred, and Aunt Chris and Uncle Marc stayed.

I have way too many amazing pictures...hopefully the following will highlight some of our favorite things. First of all, you get to the island (which has no vehicles) via a 30 minute boat ride. Of course, the boys thought this was the best!

Once we reached our house, we jumped right into the pool!


Then, we went to the beach in time to see the sunset.
The vacation was filled with a lot of relaxing and enjoying family. Here the boys are watching TV with Grammie and Grandpy (see Fred and Grandma playing cards in the background?)

The food was GREAT! Each day, one family was in charge of making and providing lunch and dinner. Here's Jason making Stromboli.

Thanks to the natural alarm clock in team RyKy, we got to see the beautiful sunrise all 5 days on vacation!

The beach was amazing. Full of seashell and very few people. It was like we owned the place! We saw dolphins only one day but the unique birds entertained us everyday.

Ryan, like many vacations, was sick on and off on the vacation. He was a trooper during the day, not wanting to miss the fun, but it always caught up with him after a few hours.

Kayaking was fun!

Jimbo won the oreo contest. There were also a lot of Ticket to Ride games played.

The sunsets were beautiful!

Here's sick Ryan, reading by the pool.

Ryan and I took a walk on the beach (trying to catch up with the rest of the gang) but we never found them. We just had the beach to the two of us.

Here are the streets of North Captiva! So fun to just drive golf carts all week.

The boys had so much fun with cousin Ian and Cole.

The Crew's nest had an awesome spiral staircase leading to a crow's nest. A highlight for the boys was heading way up there. Here Ryan is playing cars with Uncle Marc, his new best buddy.

Kyle pretty much lived in the pool all week.

I didn't get a picture of it ...but here us girls are watching Fred swim in the ocean! Personally, I do not swim in the ocean. However, if I live to be 88, perhaps I will join Fred in that benchmark!

Here's the pool at the Crew's Nest.

The first few days, our big screen TV at the Key Lime High Pool bar did not function. Luckily, a smaller replacement was delivered in time to watch the Packers beat the Lions.

We did 2 mystery dinners.

Here's the whole gang!

And we celebrated Grammie's 60th Birthday (a few weeks early).

Kyle just turned into a little fish. He is very proud of his somersault in water.

We returned Friday to Grammie and Grandpy's house. That night we went to the ER with Ryan as he had a high fever, was not communicating, and was in great pain. We headed back to Indy Saturday (a few days early) to be closer to Indy hospitals. As it turned out, he just was a bit constipated and had a bug or something.

Thanks for the great memories North Captiva. It was really a great family getaway for Thanksgiving!