A Few Pretty Much Unrelated Pictures

The big girls got to have a salon day when their friend's school had Take Your Child to Work Day.   Her mom is a beautician.  She washed and dried their hair and did their nails.

Irene likes to build towers with all sorts of things (and to knock them down!).  Annalise helped her make this can pyramid.  In some ways Irene reminds me a lot of Annalise when she was little.

I made this BB-8 cake for a friend's son's birthday.  The kids helped make the antennas.  He didn't look quite as round the next day after the interior had settled, but he didn't collapse!  And the birthday boy was pleased.

A friend of mine at enrichment took this picture of Irene.  She rarely poses when I take her picture, so I was impressed with this!

One of the local dog shelters had an adoption event at a Petco.  The kids and I went to see if there were any puppies.  After we left, I felt satisfied that we had a nice time without getting attached!  But somehow, after we got home and were looking at pictures, I kept imagining this one as our dog.  He will be a big dog, so he won't really be ours, but it took me several days to detach.

When Irene is thinking she sticks her tongue out like this. 

Natalie and I made these cookies for Valentines Day:

Caleb with a tilapia he caught near our house:

And finally, one of the ugly ducks in our neighborhood had some very cute ducklings!

Happy Valentines Day!

In honor of it being Valentines Day, here is our punny valentine from last year:

This year, Irene was only slightly more cooperative.

The Next Big Thing

Fads never get old - I mean, individually they do, but collectively they have some staying power.  Our children are just young enough that we did not really get into silly bandz - most of ours were ones passes on as the fad faded away, but the big kids are a little older now and I'm seeing a steady stream of things recommended by a friend.

Most recently, a very strange fad surfaced on our street. Annalise asked me, "Do you have any memory foam?"  Distracted with something else, I thought she had said, "Do you have any memory of home?"  which I thought was a strange thing for her to ask, but I said, "Yes."

Although she was disappointed when I clarified my answer, I still didn't really know why she wanted memory foam.  But a few days later, the girl across the street gave Annalise a round piece of memory foam decorated with marker to look like a panda's face.  Her friend had discovered something called Squishies.  Actually they called them Slow-Rise Squishies, but this does not seem to be a trademarked name.  She finally bought some online and although I never saw hers, Annalise began petitioning to pay me back for some bought on eBay.

The first ones she wanted were peaches - I looked them over and said, "These are stress balls."  And maybe they are, but they are not very expensive and she had enough to pay for the squishie and the shipping, so I thought, maybe this will be a life lesson. I pointed out that the peaches look like rear ends and she chose a strawberry instead.

So the order was made and the payment processed and delivery is anticipated - but not too soon.  The shipping time estimate was 6 to 12 weeks!  And I have to think, that in this day and age, that is plenty of time for a fad to die out.

Quotable Natalie

  "A vending machine is like a claw machine that you win every time you play!"

So Miami: The Beach

Most of my "So Miami" posts end up being quirky things about living an a ethnically diverse city, so this one may be applicable to any city near a beach.  Earlier this week, some friends invited us to join them at the beach.  My friend wanted to go to the lighthouse on Key Biscayne (Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park).  I haven't been there in more than 5 years, but I knew what I was getting into, so with trepidation, I bit the bullet and we went.

And what I want to highlight is the tendency to live "so close to the beach" and never go to the beach.  That is because getting there is exasperating.

Bill Baggs, as the crow flies, is 13 miles from our house, but - being on an island accessible by only one bridge, it is 24 miles away.  On the way there, we traveled on average 18 miles an hour.  Still, when we crossed onto the Rickenbacker Causeway and the bay glittered up to us in perfect blue, I was ok with that.

Natalie took this - actually she took about 75 pictures just like this.

And the kids had an amazing time...

Look at those shades of blue!  It makes me want to paint it! (FYI - SPF 50, she didn't even have lines from her swimsuit!)

The weather was perfect, but too chilly to really swim, so I didn't have to be quite as much of a hawk and could relax.

But promptly at 2pm, I packed the kids up and we headed home "to beat the traffic" - which I'm sure we beat some of it, but we made about 12 miles per hour going home.

So in the end, we spent 30 minutes more driving than we spent at the beach.  And still - it was kind of worth it.  If for nothing else, to remind us that is is there and that we have to make the effort to go sometimes.  Fortunately, we live 5 minutes from the marina and 20 minutes from Matheson Hammock - both as fun for little kids and almost as fun for big ones.  Caleb definitely liked the "real" beach better.