Fourth Day on the Beach!!!

Everyday on our trip Stephen wanted hot chocolate and sausage for breakfast!!
Our last full day of our trip we spent back at Bahia Honda; this time we tried the two beaches on the other side of the island. There were a lot of bugs on the sand when we first got there; filling some ecological niche I am sure; but the nice thing is we didn't have to stay on the beach at all because there were HUGE sandbars all over where we could all lay down and play with just a little water (and no bugs) or we could go to the deaper areas to enjoy more water. It was unique and very beautiful. It was perfect to practice more snorkeling too! David got Natalie a new, smaller mask and that seemed to help her to keep the water out of her mouth- so she finally got the jist of it on the last day!

The darker areas in these pictures are like underwater grasslands- they were perfect to snorkel right near shore.




It was hard to get good pictures, but there really were a lot of cool things to see. We saw some fish; not like we saw in Key West, but the plant life really was cool...and so was the HUGE Queen Conch we saw!!







After getting lucky and finding a beach shop that also sold hamburgers for lunch; we explored the other side of this part of the island. This little bay area was very nice and pretty.












Saying goodbye to the beach was hard to do--even though my skin was done with the sun; my soul was not. What an amazing time we had playing on the beach for four days.
What a great place for dinner. It was fun to watch the boat come in while we ate.
I love this picture!! I was amazed as I watched Stephen color in this sun; it was EXACTLY like the SUNSET we watched in Key West the night before--all the right colors. That is how the sun looked as it was streaked by sections of color. I guess he was paying attention even though he was throwing rocks into the ocean:) Actually he told us he liked watching the sunset!

Beautiful!
Precious!

I couldn't get enough of the laid back nature of the keys. I loved the slow pace of dinners and I could eat outside every meal if it was as nice as it was in the keys. I loved it!! The tradition of stopping to enjoy the sunset seems to be the epitomy of 'stop and smell the roses' to me and something that I could get very used to.
Natalie was so proud that her name was on the menu!
What a beautiful view and a great way to watch the sunset.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip.




Beautiful girl!
Even though we didn't have to be to the airport until 6 pm, we had a pretty good drive to get back to Miami. We thought about trying the beach again, but knew we'd have no place to clean up after we checked out of our hotel. So instead we spent the morning doing laundry and packing up. The kids entertained themselves taking pictures of each other in the room...

I thought this pic Stephen took was actually pretty good!
As we were driving back through the keys, the kids saw the very cool tree with three different colors of flowers. They thought it was SO cool and begged me to take a picture.

On our drive back we stopped and had a nice, relaxing outdoor lunch in the Islamorado Key that we hadn't spent any time in on the way down. It was a hot afternoon, but I was amazed that the Tiki hut outside was perfectly pleasant. There were these AMAZING, GIANT fish swimming in the dock right next to the restraunt. It was so cool. The fish we ate there was SO fresh. Even after eating fish everyday of our trip; none of us were tired of it. Natalie was thrilled to get a "calamarley" basket for her lunch. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how she says it and hate to correct her because it is so cute! We also stopped in Key Largo and let the kids pick out fun t-shirts to remember the trip. Stephen was so cute and also picked out a little fish visor that was adorable on him.
The other interesting thing on the trip is that we noticed that Natalie's ear ballooned out to a giant size and was very red. It was so large in fact that it lacked normal ear definition; she looked like Will Smith in Hitch. Later when the swelling went down we were able to see a bug bite on her ear. She also had a few on her face that were a little swollen too and her allergic reaction that she had before our trip flared up a little. Stephen had good luck with the elements (besides the sun with his fair skin)- on the airplane out we noticed that the finger he had an infection on several weeks before was developing a new area of infection and pus under the skin in a little different area--we were worried it would get bad on the trip but instead the briney sea water cleared it up.
At one point on our long drive I looked back and both Natalie and Stephen were asleep with one leg crossed over the other- it was the cutest thing. As I was trying to turn my camera on- Stephen moved- but it was so sweet to see them sleeping in exactly the same way!
Home Sweet Home! Isn't he cute!