Happy Birthday Danielle!

Wednesday, July 20th

Fifteen years ago on a vacation, we took a boat ride out to see dolphins.  I know it was fifteen years ago because I have an adorable picture of an eight month old Zach in the captain's chair on the boat.  I have wanted to do this again since that time, and this year I whipped out the credit card to make it happen...only it almost didn't happen.  I booked the reservation yesterday and gave my credit card number as required for a group as large as ours.  We started the day with an under the weather Julia, so we had to stop for some pain reliever.  We were running just slightly behind our desired time but plenty of time ahead of the boarding schedule, but we could not find the marina.  The GPS indicated that the address on the brochure did not exist.  We tryed to follow the map on the brochure and did not find it, so we turned around to head back home.  Then we found it, on accident five minutes before take off.  So we boarded and enjoyed the cruise.

The seagulls were like tour guides gliding along the side of the ship.  Feeding them was encouraged, but we did not partake.

This was our greeter at shell island.

The water was this clear.  Who cares about shells when you can play in this?  Okay, Wyatt still cares about shells.

We made some attempts at a family picture.  My goal is something good enough to replace the blog's two year old homepage picture.

All too soon it was time to board the ship again with the promise of some time to see the dolphins.

This dolphin was the only one that we got a good look at, and this picture is about as good a look as we got. 

Pelicans greeted us as we returned to the marina.

Julia had to be carried off the boat.  The jury is still out on whether she is actually sick or was just extra tired.  She just recovered from a strep infection and actually finished her medicine the day before we left.  She was very hot to the touch this morning and complained that she was cold.  Julia is quite prone to strep, so we will wait and see how this goes.









When it was all said and done, Zach was the first to thank me for this adventure.  I am proud of the good manners that my kids have and that they will even thank their parents for things.  They aren't perfect by any means, but they are pretty good on this.

It was time for lunch and the pool upon our return, and Julia perked right up.

Tiffany had some fun braiding hair.

We then did some shopping.  We are allowing the kids a small budget for t-shirts, but shopping tonight was not a success.  Julia found a shirt she liked, but the store did not have her size.  We decided to head further down the strip for some Pineapple Willie shirts for some of the group.  It took over an hour of sitting in stop and go (mostly stop) traffic to make my way back down the strip, and I did not dare stop.  Bickering from the back seat did not help, but the sunset through the palm trees was pretty amazing.

Wyatt offered the quote of the day.  We were leaving a shop next to an Oyster bar.  Wyatt then made this statement: I have never tried oysters.  Come on, Mom, give me a chance!

When we finally made it back to the house, Andy almost had the steaks on the grill finished.  We feasted and celebrated Danielle's birthday.  The only glitch was that after multiple failed attempts from multiple people, Austin finally pushed Zach into the pool.  The bad news is that Zach had his cell phone and ipod in his pockets and was wearing brand new tennis shoes (as in tennis shoes purchased the day before we left home for this trip).  His ipod and cell phone are now in rice and will remain there for at least 24 hours. We are hoping that they will be fine.  We cannot replace either. 

We ended our day chatting poolside and laughing over funny things we did growing up.