A Simple Day Discovering Nature

Yesterday, we spent the day at the nature center and the beach. Relaxing and spending time in nature. My Mom also spent the day with us...that made it even more special. We toured our hands on nature center and visited the new creatures there. The kids love the sea turtle...now there is a baby hatchling there too! Also a baby puffer fish we got a kick out of. Our alligator has grown by leaps and bounds! Turning 2 years old in September, we started out with the alligator being so small and the staff having to find him and get him out to show us. Now he is almost aggressive. It's interesting having been able to watch him grow the past 2 years. The staff informed me he is getting too big and he will be transferred to a bigger facility. Then our nature center will again receive another baby alligator.

After the nature center, we headed down to the beach. It was a hot day. The ocean was calm, almost no waves, some swells. It made for a great day. My son is so anxious to find a treasure at the beach!! We started digging in the sand. It's been a while since I was digging on the beach....the kids usually do that with friends. I was committed to my son's goal - to find something today! So we all sat around a hole we made digging in the sand. No luck. We finally got hot and went into the water. Since there were no waves we easily slid our hands along the ocean floor and by the day's end found sand dollars, a hermit crab, and a few unidentified sea creatures....we believe they are some type of snail. We put them in a bucket with some ocean water and studied them. The kids (and adults) were fascinated! They just loved watching our new found friends. The day ended and we sent our friends back home to the ocean. I love days like this.....great company, surroundings, weather and treasures! A day of spending time together discovering nature.

This is What It is All About!

We just had the most amazing night! Earlier this week, we decided our family is going to head to the beach on Friday evenings. We’d all have a heavier lunch on Fridays, then meet with Dad and have a quick dinner of granola and fruit. Tonight was our first night. We met at the beach as planned. We went out to look at the pier. There were dolphins swimming in the water! We watched them for about 20 minutes. The kids loved it. We could see their spouts, top fins and the tail. They were about 20 feet in front of us. WOW! We also saw some pelicans fly by. There were shrimp boats in the water and small planes occasionally flying overhead. We walked along the pier and saw everyone’s catches. One man and his two sons were pulling a crab trap out of the water. There were 2 crabs in it – a Blue Claw Crab and a Stone Crab. We stopped to watch. The Blue Claw Crab was too small. The man let the crabs out of his trap. The kids got to watch them walk sideways! It’s always interesting to see them do this “live and in person”. The fisherman’s 5 year old son gently pressed his shoe on the back on the crab’s shell and got a hold of his pinchers so he could throw him back in the water. We were all fascinated. Afterward we took a walk along a wooded trail. On the way back, we passed some bicyclists who asked us if we saw the deer. We had not so we kept an eye out for it when suddenly it was running right towards us!!!! It was running right along the bike path. It was AMAZING to watch! It got scared and run back into the woods, but WHAT a sight!!!

We then headed along the beach. There was a group of people “beach sanding.” They had the big 100 foot nets and got in the water to net up some fish, shrimp and crabs. We caught up with them right when they were coming up, so we were able to see what they caught. The kids are just amazed at all of this!

There was also an INCREDIBLE sunset tonight. Just lit up the sky like a big fireball! Beautiful!

We were out for about 2 hours tonight and all of these events occurred within a mile of one another. What a great night! How much we all got to experience!!!! It’s nice to have simplified our lives to be able to concentrate and spend time on the things that really matter, like tonight. We will definitely continue our Friday nights at the beach as this one was a huge success.