It seems we skipped right from too cold to too hot this year and missed moderate temperatures altogether. However, I am enjoying having warm days again and despite the higher temperatures, I'm keeping my house opened up for as long as possible. The house wraps around the patio in a L shape with four doors opening onto it. My favorite days are when all the doors are open and we practically live outside.
With the warmer weather here we've been enjoying lots of time outside taking walks and bike rides. Aravis, Xury and I took a walk at a nature center.
These "balance beams" showed the difference between the coral snake and the king snake.
We also spent an afternoon exploring a new beach. All four of the kids came which is very rare these days. Tanner and Dominick rode their skateboards down the street while Aravis and Xury played in the water.
As is typical for Aravis she spent her time looking for things to catch and had quite a productive afternoon.
She caught several jelly fish, some small fish, a hermit crab and this ragged sea hare.
It took a whole lot of googling to identify it. At first Aravis thought it was a sea urchin but one of them inked when she picked it up with the shovel she was using to catch them. After much searching I finally stumbled on the ragged sea hare and there it was. It was pretty cool when it inked.
Touching the jelly fish. (These ones can't sting)
The coolest part of the whole day though, was when Aravis practically bumped into manatee. It was a very small, shallow swimming area and she was swimming a few feet out from us. She suddenly noticed something big in the water right next to her. She ran over to me thinking it was an alligator. At first, I thought she was seeing things because sometimes the seaweed or shadows can make it look like something's there when there's not, but pretty soon I could tell there was definitely something very large moving through the water about 15 feet from shore. We were following it (from a safe distance) and trying to figure out what it was when it's head surfaced for a minute and we could see it was a manatee. We've seen manatees before but never where we were swimming. We followed it until it went back out to sea and disappeared. It was pretty exciting.
Aravis decided she wanted to make a boat that would hold her weight without getting wet. Her first idea was to tape pool noodles to a body board but it wasn't enough to support her weight. Then she decided to try blowing up ziplock baggies and taping them underneath.
It worked!
It supported her weight and she didn't get wet. She was very pleased with her success. Although, I think she fell in at some point every time she used it.
And, it's caterpillar season again. They completely devoured the milkweed in the yard so I bought another plant and they devoured that too. Every time I thought I had enough milkweed, more caterpillars appeared.
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