A Few Pretty Much Unrelated Pictures

Here are some pictures from the time we returned from our trip to Arkansas until recently - in chronological order I think.  I would like to get back into the routine of posting routinely, but for now a catch up post will have to do.

In the summer, we try to do a lot of wet activities.  Otherwise, the summer gets a little oppressive.  I know that it gets hotter almost everywhere else, but it stays hot here from April until October. 

One thing I appreciate about Miami is the availability of Caribbean products.  Champagne cola is a common Caribbean soda and it seems that every country has it's own version.  It is similar to cream soda.  This one is Haitian.

Natalie excelled in swimming lessons this summer - a big change from last year when she refused to go off the diving board!  She loves to swim.  Fortunately for Irene, seeing that change in Natalie was encouraging to me throughout her 2 weeks of swimming lessons, which accomplished very little.

Summer = Bufo Toads, this is a smallish one.

The Village of Palmetto Bay put up this unusual piece or artwork in a roundabout.  They have another one that is a very dramatic fish sculpture, so this one was pretty puzzling.  I think it was unpopular because they removed it.

For Irene's birthday we got her a pony ride - there is a stable in Davey where you can rent a pony for half and hour and you (the parent) lead the pony with your child riding.  They have a huge area to ride in, a big improvement over a regular pony ride.  Irene was beyond delighted.

We went ice skating on the first day of public school.   It looks like Annalise is alone, but there were several other homeschooling families with us.

We found this black racer at the park one day.

Natalie and our neighbor's maltipoo, Milo

Caleb went on a trip to the Cayman Islands with the church youth group and brought back a rum cake, it was pretty small, so we decide to try making one ourselves, this is it:

Some friends from Trinidad brought us some Trini hot chocolate.  It was not powdered, it looked like a  big chocolate bean and you grated it into hot milk.  It also has some spices and orange peel, so it wasn't exactly like Swiss Miss.

We did a unit on American history, I had wanted to make several recreated pictures, but this is the only one we did - it's the Gold Rush.

Annalise has been cartwheeling all over the place.  She even learned how to do a 1 handed cartwheel.

Irene riding off into the sunset on her balance bike - which I highly recommend.  She can already ride a regular bike without training wheels, but we don't have a small enough one currently for that to be safe.