This picture has nothing to do with our vacation, other than I took it when I was packing. The kids have this "thing" with pushing off their mattresses and walking on their box springs. This has resulted in holes punched through the thin material surrounding the box spring. Anna crawled into one of the holes and Alex came to tell me about it. I couldn't resist the urge to grab the camera. Silly girl!
Here's her head peaking out. Who knew I would be finding enjoyment from those holes.
Here's another picture I couldn't resist taking. The boys like to pack their back-packs with a few toys to take with them on vacation and Anna went and got hers to pack too. She looked so darn cute with her back-pack and hat on.
Here's finally a vacation photo of the hotel we stayed at. It was nice because it had its own marina and we were able to park our boat right in front of our room. I think our room was the third from the left on the second floor. This is the view from our boat after we pulled out of our slip. Remember that we don't have reverse, so getting in and out of the slip is challenging.
Here is a another view of the hotel and marina.
Here's Alex, Quinn, Ethan, & Anna enjoying a ride in the bow of the boat.
On our way out into the gulf we stopped at a restaurant that you can access from the water. You can see a little of Dom tying up the boat.
Here's our boat tied up at the dock where we stopped to eat at the Pirate's Tiki Hut.
We noticed when we ate at several restaurants there, that they had no windows. They were built like screen porches. We couldn't believe that they didn't need air conditioning, but it was very pleasant. We also were not bothered by mosquitoes! A true miracle in Florida!
We headed back out in our boat after a good meal. This is when our boat engine started to overheat. Ugh! Dom turned it off and started pouring buckets of water over it trying to cool it down. We turned our boat around to head back to the marina and traveled very slowly trying not to over exert the engine. It was hot all the way back, but sometimes when watching the temperature gauge, it would go down, like it was trying to cool down. Dom figured it could be the water pump or the thermostat that was bad. So we went back to the hotel to await the fireworks that our waitress told us about. The kids had wanted to stay out in the boat to watch them, but that wasn't to be and wouldn't have been anyway since our night-time lights weren't working on the boat. But we figured we would see the fireworks from our hotel room.
And we were right. We had an awesome view from our balcony. Here is a picture that I wasn't sure would turn out, but it did. It was great to be able to watch the fireworks without having to fight a crowd or traffic to do so. The show was short, but at least we got to see some.
Dom noticed Anna holding up her blanket-bear to watch the fireworks, so Dom helped her out by holding up her doll too. How cute is that?!
Here's Quinn enjoying a cookie sandwich while watching the fireworks. He took two fudge stripe cookies and put a chocolate chip cookie in between the fudge stripes and declared it a cookie sandwich. Quinn loves his food!The next morning, Dom called a boat parts store (lack of a better name) to see if they had a thermostat for the boat. He figured it had to be the thermostat and not the water pump figuring that if it was the water pump it would have just not worked, period, not try to work and then not work off and on. So Dom went down to this store which was just around the corner from our hotel. The guy had a part that would work, but wasn't the exact replacement, since our boat is so old and they no longer make the exact part. Dom came back and put the new part on and presto, it worked.
So here we are back in the boat looking for a good spot to stop and gather scallops. Scallops like to hang out in the grassy spots.
But before we found a good spot, we had to run from some storms that were brewing. There was just scattered storms and we were able to steer around them.
We found a little private beach to enjoy while waiting out the storms. I really wanted to stay at a hotel on the beach, but since we didn't, I got to enjoy this beach without any crowds. That was nice.
Here is our boat hanging out while we were enjoying the beach.
"Our" island wasn't completely private, as there were some houses on this island
We finally spotted a good spot for scalloping, as there were a lot of other boats in this area. And we knew they were diving and not fishing since they had their dive flags up.
Here is Alex and Dom scalloping while pulling along Ethan on the inner-tube.
Here is sweet little Anna hanging out with me in the boat while Dom and Alex were out scalloping. I was trying to enjoy reading a book, but in the confined space with Anna and any boys that chose not to be in the water, it was challenging for them not to be completely bored and not bother me. :) 
Quinn wanted to fish, but the fishing line kept tangling up and then I had to abandon my book to try and untangle it. I couldn't figure out how to get the pole to stop doing this and Dom wasn't around to ask since he was in the water. So Quinn had to quit fishing, since his mama was "drain bamaged."
Eventually our boat got reverse back. Dom had greased up the switch that he removed the day we left for vacation and replaced it back where it belonged and it started working again. This made docking much easier.
We had a pleasant little get-away lasting only three days. Carabelle turned out to be a tiny little town with hardly anything there. There was one grocery store and a couple of restaurants and that's about it. It is a boating community, so there were several marinas. Alex wanted to know why we kept seeing the same people everywhere we went. LOL! That's how small the town was.
