Naples in photos

We are back and I finally found that cable for my camera!  Here are some of my favorite photos of our trip.

 Emma and Sam on our last night.  

 The view off the pool deck of the beautiful clouds after Isaac was long gone.  What can you make out of the cloud shapes?!

 Naples proved to have crabs too!  We love to run all over the beach at night and chase these little fellas'.  Don't worry, we put them back.

 This is the only photo I got the entire trip with all 3 kids.  This was in Lakeland outside Scott's grandma Lois' place.  It was just starting to rain.  I am so glad I got one photo before Claire had to leave to go back to St. Louis.

 This is us with Great Grandma Lois at Olive Garden where we got the absolute best service ever.  I am laughing just typing this.  I think this waitress would have given us her right arm if we needed it!  It made the dinner enjoyable and hopefully her manager is reading this!!!  Lois is 98 and is doing quite well.  She still has some spunk and I love that about her.  Every time I see her she always tells me how nice she thought our wedding was.  It tickles me every time.  

 Oops, I lied earlier.  I not only got a picture of all 3 kids, but one with me in it.  RARE.  I love the way Sam looks in this picture.  He is standing so tall.  They are all trying to keep up with Claire.

 Emma and Sam play this ninja game which I find hilarious so I had to get a picture of it.  Emma found those gigantic sunglasses in the ocean and they came all the way home to St. Louis with us...Yep!

Here is the backyard view of the house we had for all 8 days!  It was the nicest place I have ever stayed.  I feel so lucky to have won this trip at the CCS auction.  We were only 1.5 blocks from the beach and could walk almost everywhere.

Our top 13 of this vacation (most of these are from Emma):

1.  She found a sand dollar

2.  She found a starfish

3.  She found a shark tooth, or 70 of them.

4.  She got a polish change and got to sit in a massaging chair

5.  She got to eat grouper, snapper, shrimp and scallops

6.  She got to try lobster

7.  Sam got to see an alligator

8.  Daddy got a new FL gators hat

9.  We got to see grandma Lois

10.  We did not get hit by a hurricane and only lost power for about 3 hours!

11.  We found Abbott's custard in Naples

12.  We discovered we need a gas grill

13.  "Even Dad is really into shells!" True quote.

And Claire managed to fly alone back to St. Louis with only one small mishap which all worked out.  I learned that when an airplane begins taxiing away from the gate that doesn't not always mean it is taking off!  

Naples...My questions from the beach chair

We are in Naples.  It is beautiful and so relaxing.  I forgot my camera cable to transfer pictures to my computer so you will have to wait for those.  I still feel the need to blog, mostly because I have the time, but also because I have had time to think.  Time to think gives me thoughts that I want to record before they pass me by.

I have been thinking a lot about the questions I am currently struggling with.  I am asking myself WHY am I so anxious about making decisions for and about my children.  Thy simple answer to the WHY is because I love them severely and I want them to know it, feel it. The more complex answer to the WHY is that I want to be in control of them and their life.  I want them to be successful members of society that don't carry baggage.  I want them to be normal.  I want them to feel normal.  I want them to be self-confident and to be good at something, not everything, but something.  And then I dig a little deeper and my blood pressure creeps up and I check my email again and I am scheduling another meeting in the management of my kids and I just want to cry.  WHY does it seem so hard sometimes?
This brings me to prayer this week on my beach chair.  I cry out to God to just help me to trust him with the little people I am responsible for.  Please guide me.  Help me to stop feeling anxious and to trust him with everything.  This is hard.

Also from my beach chair this week I read a book.  I know this is surprising for many.  I read a fiction book.  One of maybe 4 in my adult life.  The funny thing about this book is that I bought it to read the last time Scott and I took a trip to Hawaii (over 5 years ago) and I never read it on that trip.  However, I never would have appreciated it the way I did when reading it now.  One of the main characters has dyslexia.  As you probably know Emma was diagnosed with dyslexia this year.  There is a great deal of redemption in the book for this character and boy did she ever remind me of my Emma!!  I am constantly seeing Emma in a new light.  Her talents are many.  She is delightful, interesting, fun and inquisitive. In the book the character with dyslexia becomes a personal shopper/fashion designer.  She is good at this and always had been, but never acted on it because she always compared herself to her attorney sister.  She thought that what she was good at, was not good enough.   Claire has been absent from our trip since Tuesday because she flew back to St. Louis.  We have missed her.  She is having fun at 6th grade camp.  I love having 2 girls, but there is and always will be competition between girls. I mean part of the WHY that I struggle with is competition with other women...I means it exists right?  How do I escape it?  Today Emma and I went shopping in downtown Naples.  She was my personal shopper.  She would pick things out for me and give me her opinions freely, she was right some of the time!  It was really fun.  We went in every store that looked interesting in a 6 block stretch.  She and I loved every minute.

I have felt lazy this vacation.  I have sat...A LOT.  I cannot run due to a femoral neck stress fracture.  I am in a bad mood.  It is sort of nice to have an excuse to sit, but I need to run.  I run for my head.  I can work out a lot of the answers to my questions on a long run.  If I don't answer them, at least they don't matter for a short time.  They go away and all seems right.  I know the runner's high exists, and the beach high is only temporary.  I am sort of scared to go home.  I will enjoy it for 1 more day and then I will need to rest in not having all my questions answered.  Rest in not knowing what is best.  Rest in knowing that my God knows and cares.  Rest in knowing that I will never be good enough.  Rest in knowing that Jesus is the answer to all of my questions.  It sounds easy.  It is hard.