Fall In Florida

I know that most of the time I am complaining about how warm it is and how I miss the change of seasons down here in Florida, but it is not all bad. Yesterday was a beautiful day, still hot, but beautiful. After church we loaded up the kayaks and headed out to the lagoon for a little while. Since we did not head out until about 2:30pm, it was not too hot (and being on the water helps a lot too). It may be warm here year round, but it is beautiful here.

The kids wanted to swim, but it just isn't deep enough in most places. Here they waded around for a little bit.
This is a canal in one of the neighborhoods on the lagoon. Lots of big boats. These are the kinds of places to find the manatee. Finally, at the end of the trip, we came across one. He got really close to the boat. It was very cool! No pictures of that though.
Okay, this is fall color in Florida. I have no idea what kind of tree it is, but in the fall, the tips of the branches turn. I am not sure it is leaves or blooms. It looks like leaves, but not like the leaves on the tree that stay green. Anyway, at some point the tree will lose it's leaves for a few weeks and then it buds out green again. Not quite the colors of New England, but at least it is seasonal! Mike just bought the second kayak last week and was thinking he should have gotten another oar, because we only had three oars. Well, Leah is not much of a paddler so we did not give her one. After about 10 minutes in the boat she decided she wanted to sit at the very front of the boat. When Allison saw that, she wanted to sit at the front of her boat too. Needless to say, she never got back to paddling. Turns out that instead of being one paddle to short, we had one extra paddle. Looks like before long, Rachel will be a paddler though.
The end of a fun day. Here the girls hang out in their favorite spots on the boat and try to collect mangrove seeds. They were seeing who could collect the most.