Hi Deb, I'm so glad to hear you love these caramels! Because these homemade caramels don't include emulsifiers like most store bought caramels generally do, they are more prone to developing crystals when they are melted and reheated. I recently experimented with re-cooking some of my caramel scraps with heavy cream and a little more corn syrup. I  cooked the caramels as usual, but only to the thread stage (223-235F). My aim was caramel sauce, but it ended up being fairly firm when chilled, soft and sticky at room temperature, and a nice sauce when heated. I think for turtles the goal temperature would be more like 235-240F. My suggestion would be to make another batch of caramels, and remove a portion of the mixture when you reach the lower temperature, add a little vanilla, and then let these serve as your "softer" caramels for turtles. If you need to melt them to assemble your turtles, the melting process should be very brief and may not cause as much crystalization (our recipe calls for melting the caramels on top of the pecans briefly in the oven). The final cooking temperature really depends on how firm you want the caramel to be in your turtles, so you might want to try melting some of your already made caramels this way and see how it works. 

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