Spring Break from Minnesota Cold!

We were blessed by a week long visit from our dear great niece, Torie and her cousin and friend from Minnesota.
Picked them up at the Tampa Airport on Tuesday evening March 31st and made a stop at Chic Fila for dinner it was their first visit and enjoyed the food and fun.

We enjoyed having them and were able to visit many beaches, share our sunshine, boats and pool with them.

The highlight was being out in the Gulf of Mexico snorkeling and watching for Dolphins.

The weather was beautiful during their stay and also enjoyed many beautiful sunsets.

We were sad to see them go! Hope they can come back someday.  Maybe Spring Break next year.

Wisconsin Visitors!

Had a wonderful time with our dear friends Bruce and Cheryl.
Golf was fun except both Bruce and Cheryl beat me each time we went out! They are both very good.

Our friend the Alligator on hole #7 at Myakka Pines became famous with many photos on Facebook and made the national news.

Enjoyed the Art Fair in Downtown Venice as we usually do.

Cheryl did her magic in the kitchen and whipped up some great dishes to enjoy along with the wonderful Wisconsin cheese they brought down with them. We also went out to our favorite restaurants and enjoyed fish tacos together.

Mother Nature (Cheryl) also planted some beautiful flowers in our back yard and the bright red color of these Geraniums will remind us of her.

We got to play a lot of games in the evenings, Wizard of course was our favorite and each of us won at least one game. Catch Phrase was not as much fun as the girls dominated the game every time we played.

Boating was perfect! We had warm days and plenty of sunshine. Enjoyed many adventures and saw a lot of Dolphins! Also a beautiful Eagle perched high in a tree.

Enjoyed the local beaches of Venice and Englewood.






Got to go sailing on the Gulf for the first time since 1995!

The only complaint was the time went by much too fast as usual and we look forward to their next visit with much anticipation!

We and all our friends above will miss them very much!

Goodbye until we meet again (soon we hope).

Michigan Visitors, Down from the cold!

Our good friends Ted and Beth came for a short visit and we sure enjoyed seeing them. It has been a long time since we last spent some time together (we think it was 2006).
Since this was their first visit to Venice we had to give them the tour of our community by land and by sea.
We took a boat ride on the Inter-coastal Waterway and enjoyed the views of Venice from the water.
We stopped for lunch at our favorite restaurant,

The Crow's Nest

and enjoyed a wonderful meal and watched as the sea fog rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico, it was quite a site and made our trip back to the marina a little exciting.

Our land tour included the highlights of Venice:

Sharky's on the Pier

Venice Beach, Downtown Venice and of course Venice Theater.

After a day of touring we returned home to enjoy desert and coffee.
It was a wonderful visit and hope to see them again soon.

Allie our friend in the pond always likes is see our visitors. That is about the only time we see him. He had to say goodbye too.

Hard to say goodbye!