We woke up eager to see the beach, the pool...everything. We wandered around and swam in both salt water and chlorinated water, relaxing and enjoying our condo-for-the-week. The day was excitement-filled: fishermen catching a shark right where we were swimming (it was a small shark), up to the pool, down to the beach, up to the pool. Bonnie got pinched by a crab twice, Emmett three times. Joel and I each saw a long black snake slithering through the grass by the pool. While we sat under our beach umbrellas, a huge black crow landed right on Bonnie’s umbrella and we hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. Nature everywhere!
In the afternoon, Bonnie and I went to the store and stocked up on supplies—food, rafts, more food. We saw a heron and a crane in the Publix parking lot. Ben and I cooked dinner. Ben grilled steaks (and a ginger-garlic-soy-sauce-marinated tofu steak for me), salad, corn on the cob (also on the grill), and watermelon. After the kids went to bed, the adults relaxed in the night air, out by the pool. Ah, the tropics. To Bonnie and me, pure bliss. (To Ben and Joel, sunburn, sticky salt, and sand in the computer parts can spell nothing good, but I swear they both look more relaxed.)
However, we had no Internet. Over the next few days, Joel resolved this problem by buying an Ethernet cable and fixing the office up with high speed which we can get from our bedrooms.
The next day, I made breakfast burritos in the morning, and the kids rushed back in to tell us that the fishermen had caught another shark (a small hammerhead! they let it go again…but it didn’t seem to scare the kids) in the afternoon. Bonnie and I floated on a raft for about an hour in the Gulf (somewhat nervously trying not to wiggle our toes) while the kids rode the body boards, looked for shells, and played in the pool. After lunch, Ben and I watched the Canadian Grand Prix while the kids played miniature golf at the small course right here at the condo and at 3, everyone was back outside again. Ben saw a raccoon and we all saw a dark brown bunny hopping around. I saw that long black snake again, slithering across the path from the pool to the beach. The kids spent an extended period trying to coax coconuts down from a tree, then trying to break them, drain the water into cups (they drank it before we could tell them not to), open and taste them. I finally convinced them they probably contained pesticide and they then moved on to the next adventure…rehearsing their “stunt kid” television show they decided to invent.
Joel and Bonnie cooked dinner—a clam and shrimp boil with grilled shrimp skewers for the kids, rice, and edamame. I made a pitcher of margaritas, then we all went down to the beach to watch a spectacular sunset. After we put the kids down, the adults sat around the pool again, and we were all sure we saw some creepy creature with glowing eyes slinking around under the beach chairs on the other side of the pool—but when Joel got up to investigate, we were all a little embarrassed to discover it was a beach ball, blowing around under the chairs in the breeze, reflecting the pool light. All the nature has us freaked out, I guess!
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