Island Adventure

The Thursday before the Astorga's left, Anthony took the day off of work. The original plan was to go to Sea World, but we were all exhausted and wanted a fun outing that would be a little more low key. So we decided to pile into Anthony's fishing boat for a ride out to an island for a picnic! It was a little bit chilly out, but the wind made it freezing!!! We bundled up as much as we could and tried not to get wet. James was in heaven!! He loved every minute of it, that boy is obsessed with boats. He constantly points out boats everywhere we go and always talks about "Daddy's boat". Sometimes in the mornings he will ask for Daddy and when I tell him he is at work he responds, "In daddy's boat?". I think he thinks Anthony works on a boat   or takes a boat to work :)

Here we are all cozy in the boat: Anthony was in the back and Jared, Nolan, James, and I were in the middle:

Happy, Nolan, Dallin, and Teya were at the front. Poor Nolan, he was not a fan of the boat ride:

Anthony spotted a large conch on shore next to the boat, so he got it to show the kids:

 Anthony getting the fishing pole ready to throw out:

We found a spot on the beach that wasn't too windy and set up some lawn chairs. Anthony gave James his first official casting lesson with his new fishing pole!

James has become pretty particular about his clothing/accessories. If he is wearing a hoodie, the hood has to be on at ALL times regardless of the temperature, jackets and shirts must always be buttoned and zipped, and socks and shoes must always be on. When we got to the island, we tried to take his life jacket off so that he would be more comfortable but he immediately said, "No, no, NO" so we just let him keep it on rather than have a tantrum on our hands. Such a funny boy!

 After lunch, we set off to explore more of the island. It was much bigger than I thought it was!! One of the more surprising things was how much trash people had left behind! I've seen people camping on the island before, but I thought it was a given that you clean up after yourself and leave things cleaner than you found them!

Some of the trails on the island are pretty narrow and overgrown and on one section we had to just lift James and carry him through. It looked so funny to me, I had to get a picture of it:

 More exploring with the fishing pole:

 We took turns taking pictures at these palm trees overlooking the water. Isn't it a gorgeous view?

When it was time to go, we said something about getting in the boat to go home and James couldn't get to the boat fast enough! He was dying to get back in it, so we went ahead and put him in while Anthony maneuvered the boat so that it was deep enough for us to push off. I'm pretty sure that being the king of Daddy's boat, even for a few minutes, is this boy's version of heaven.

 On the way back to the dock I was thinking how disappointing it was that we hadn't seen any dolphins, when all of a sudden a few popped up! We saw them a couple of times before they took off down the channel and it felt like the perfect ending to a great outing!