Who needs Disneyworld?

We had another amazingly sweet trip to the Florida Keys this year.  Maybe someday our kids will whine and complain and drag us to Disneyworld instead, but for now we all thoroughly enjoy this version of a Florida vacation, involving (primarily) swimming, fishing, nature exploration, and eating all the local fruits of the land and the sea.  The kids were in the ocean and the pool multiple times each day, getting alternately salty and chlorinated.  Sand made its way into every crevice, and was washed away again daily.  When they weren't in the water or out on some expedition, Haley was making drip castles in the sandbox and Aiden was building forts out of coconut fronds or sneaking in another episode of his newest Netflix addition, DinoSquad.  It was pretty much heaven for a week. A huge thank you to my parents for hosting us and giving over their entire house to our craziness!

"Hapa and Mema's" house in the keys

Haley meeting a hermit crab

Aiden got the hang of snorkeling for real this time!

Mangrove (Red, i think)

Fried gator!

Aiden's "tiger den" fort

We went to the Everglades and checked out the gators and herons, perused a perfumed orchid greenhouse, sampled all kinds of crazy tropical fruit in Redlands' Fruit & Spice Park, and watched as the deep sea fishing boats at Bud n' Mary's unloaded the catch of the day.  We had a brick oven pizza party with friends, ate a whole deep fried lionfish (invasive in the keys so please order one to eat!) and a basket of crispy gator pieces.  We fed tarpon at Robbie's dock, snorkeled and lounged in the warm shallow waters at Bahia Honda, and explored tropical hammocks in Key Largo and Islamorada.

Haley in the everglades

Anhinga Trail

Sampling fruits at Fruit & Spice Park

Bananas

 Canistel, or egg fruit (left), custard apple (right)

Baobab Tree

The tour guide said you could hear water running in the tree...he might have been pulling our legs

Eating nasturtiums

Deep fried whole lionfish - a good deed to eat one since they are invasive exotic pests!

R.F. Orhids in Homestead

Bahia Honda sandcastles

Bahia Honda

We visited Indian Key State Park by boat and walked all the abandoned island's old roadways, reading about the history of the settlement and the massacre there during the Seminole Indian wars.  Between marveling over the vegetation (huge yucca plants and prickly pear cacti dominate), wading in mangrove tidepools, and exploring antlion traps and land hermit crabs, we managed to pick up some history too.

Old roadways, Indian Key

Gravesite, Indian Key

Exploring tidepools

Land Hermit Crabs

My parents' friends Dave and Linda invited us to their bayside dock to fish one afternoon, and we caught 3 big mangrove snappers which we filleted up and grilled for dinner with a tropical fruit salsa.  Later in the week, Andy, Aiden and Hapa went out fishing on the boat and caught about 30 fish (6 different kinds) - including several large grouper for Aiden and a cero mackerel for Andy.  Yes, they did have their lucky ice cream before they left the dock- at 930 am!  I think we were lucky all around though, with so many great activities and 7 days of constant sun and warm temps-- kind of hard to find a reason to go anywhere else for our winter vacation!

Fishing Dave & Linda's dock for snapper

Haley would rather swim than fish

Mangrove Snapper

One of Aiden's groupers

Andy's mackerel

We'll miss you, Grandma Guppy

Andy's Grandma Kulis, known fondly as "Grandma Guppy" by all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, passed away last week at the age of 96.  We headed down to Long Island to celebrate her life and mourn her passing with family and friends.  It was a sad few days, full of questions from a particular little boy who has visited his Great Grandma several times each year since he was born, but it was also a time to reflect on a life well lived and a family that gained so much from her love and guidance.

Aiden and Grandma Guppy in 2009

I knew Mrs. Kulis for only about a tenth of her life, but she was always full of spunk and so clearly loved her grandkids more than anything.  She always had lots of questions, hugs, and little gifts for each of them at every family event.  I remember a particularly fierce battle of Lithuanian egg-cracking between Grandma Guppy and Alex (Andy's cousin who was no more than 9 at the time) one Easter shortly after I met Andy (and way before I had any clue that we were going to get married and start a family of our own)...Grandma was "egging" Alex on like crazy and in the end Alex was victorious... he was so happy to have outlasted everyone and received a huge hug from Grandma as congratulations.  I remember thinking, "wow, what a fun grandma she is."

I think Aiden is listening to a secret here... and getting a secret squeeze!

And she really was a fun-loving person, made all the more remarkable given that she was handed the difficult task of raising 4 young kids on her own after her husband passed away very young.  I can only imagine what that would have done to my outlook on life (sometimes I don't feel very light-hearted with only 2 kids and a hubby who is alive and well) but either the laughter was a survival mechanism, or having survived those difficult circumstances, she felt that everything else was easy to smile at.  I'm not sure which, but it's clear to me that she was a remarkable person, and I know we will all miss her very much.

Indoor Day Photos

Playing "Bandito" is serious business

Snuggling with the pup

 Lots of coloring for Haley these days

Handsome dude

Superbowl Champs!

When Aiden was 1.5 years old, the Giants played the Pats in the Superbowl.  They won.  Now Haley is 1.5 years old.  Hmmm, do you follow my thinking here?  I told Andy that if he ever wants to see the Giants win the Superbowl again, he'll probably have to have another kid.  At which point he said, "You know, I think I've seen them win enough times for one man..."  The rest of you Giants fans out there may beg to differ, so I hope for your sake it's all got nothing to do with 18 month old Deegan kids.

It's been a fun ride lately, though.  On Superbowl Sunday we woke up early and went to cheer Andy on as he ran in the first annual "Pigskin Classic 5K" in Claremont.  Runners were supposed to wear their favorite team jerseys, and as you might imagine, things were heavily skewed towards the Patriots.  I think we saw one other Giants fan in the 200+ racers, and he was about 10 years old, so no fun to bludgeon to a pulp.  Andy, on the other hand.... had to run very fast to get away from all those pats fans!  He ran a quick race and we hightailed it out of there to find shelter in a practically empty bowling alley for a few hours.  It was Haley's first time candlepin bowling, and she wasn't very interested.  She ate snack, danced around, and commented on her "new" shoes.  The rest of us had a good game though, each taking turns bowling "for Haley" when she was up.  As Murphy's Law dictates, we each did significantly better bowling for Haley than for ourselves.  Aiden even got Haley the only strike of the whole game.  And in the very last round, Haley suddenly decided to step up and claim her victory by pushing a glacially slow ball down the alley and knocking over one final pin.  Yup.  That's our Haley girl!
 

Andy racing away from a pats fan

Aiden practices the "over and under" candlepin style

We went over to the Kennedy's for the big game later that night, and it was great to watch with friends, even though we were the only Giants fans.  Andy hopped and grunted and cursed and shouted the whole game (you know, the usual) but I think it was comical for our friends to see that in action since we generally watch the games at home by ourselves, while trying to get 20 loads of laundry done and vaccuum the basement.  Despite the high stress (Sonya, a nurse, brought out her portable blood pressure machine at one point, out of sheer curiosity as to what Andy's bp was, but he couldn't sit still long enough for any of that nonsense) the G-men pulled it out in the end.  Go Giants!

Haley was much more interested in snack than in bowling

But she commented on her cool shoes a lot!

Strange things afoot...

We've got flying squirrels, for one thing.  They're living in our attic and, not content to occupy just one floor, our basement too.  They scritch and scratch all night long and who knows what kind of damage they are doing to create nifty little love nests for themselves, so they must go.  So far we've caught 6 of them- 4 using the cutest little hav-a-hart trap you've ever seen, and two by knocking them off a pipe they were teetering along in the basement and snagging them in a dragonfly net.  (All that dragonhunting has finally paid off- these guys are way easier to catch than a Harlequin Darner.)

These things are tiny!  I had never seen a Northern Flying Squirrel up close before last week, but they're really adorable despite the fact that we have to evict them pronto.  Only about 4" long with a flat little bushy paddle of a tail and lots of loose skin for gliding from treetop to (argh) rooftop.  Getting rid of the squirrels we have now doesn't seem to be the issue- they're easy enough to catch or trap and I've been relocating them 30 miles away, over two interstates and a very wide river.  The problem is we can't figure out where the heck they are getting into the house, so we might as well have a flashing neon "VACANCY" sign on the roof for new ones to move in.  We're working on it though, and hoping not to have to hire a professional exterminator in the end.  Keep you posted.

Another strange happening occurred when we woke up one morning to find New London coated in a soft rime ice... tiny crystal daggers shooting out of every outdoor surface.  I'm sure that in Greenland or Iceland there is a specific word for these formations, but "tiny crystal dagger thingies" will have to suffice in English.  It was beautiful with all the branches and pine needles coated, but it only lasted 1 or 2 hours before the temperature rose and it all melted away.  We're not sure what caused it in the first place, but guessing some perfect combination of temperature and humidity and (lack of?) wind.  Whatever it was, we much preferred it to the solid ice the previous week!