Christmas 2010

Two things seem to happen each year - one, time seems to move faster (where did the year go) and two, I don't have the energy that I used to (always seem to get sick now at the end of the year).

Fortunately, we had organized a family Christmas holiday to North Captiva Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida. We had an amazing holiday and I made sure to take lots of pictures and videos with my new Canon Power s95 camaera but it was a bit of an epic adventure to get there but it sure was worth the effort.

We all got up at 4:30am on Christmas Day in order to take a taxi to the Calgary Airport. We were all set to go for our 7:00am flight to Toronto but unfortunately two of the stewardesses slept in so our flight was delayed for almost 30 minutes until they arrived. We finally got going and Marie & I sat up front in business class (I finally manged to get a couple of flight upgrades) while the boys were back in the regular seats.

Once in Toronto we made our connection to Fort Myers with no problems due to the fact that our flight was delayed because of connection and mechanical issues. We finally made it to Fort Myers around 7:00pm and fortunately our shuttle bus had waited for us and we were off to the Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island (with a conveniance store stop en route to pick up some dinner). The Manager of the Lodge had waited up for us to arrive and she helped us check into our room in the original 1926 part of the building.

We all had a great sleep and after breakfast we went for a walk to the Marina and the Randell Research Centre about the Calusa Indians who used to live in this area.