Key West 2015

Last week we went on our annual trip to Key West! It was hot and crazy with the kids, but also fun. I wouldn't call it a relaxing vacation, but then again what vacation with kids can be called relaxing?

We left at 5am on Saturday morning to try to avoid traffic on the 7 1/2 hour long trip. We decided to pack up the car right before we left so we wouldn't forget our shower/bed things we would need the night before. Of course, at 4:45am it started pouring down rain! Poor Anthony had to pack up the car and got soaking wet. We were stuffed in there :)

 

While I was trying to take a picture of James, he kept showing me his stinky feet :)

 

We brought tablets loaded with movies for both of the boys, but James was so excited, he didn't want to watch it. Instead he asked us if we were there yet for about 6 hours straight. It was awesome. We also played the alphabet game and as a result we realized that we might need to get James' eyes checked...it was hard to tell if he really couldn't see the things we were pointing out or if he just wasn't paying attention.

 

Once we got to the top of the keys, we stopped for lunch at a place that has a large dock for tarpon feeding. You buy a bucket of fish and you get to go out and feed these huge fish just waiting for you. It was wild! Anthony got some good video of it on the gopro and added it to his lobstering video. The first eight minutes is of Anthony catching lobster and the last two minutes is feeding the tarpon.

 

 

Sunday we decided to go to church at the small branch they have in Key West. While we were waiting for everyone else to get ready, the boys played in the yard with a new rocket toy we got for James. They were so cute dressed up in their church clothes!

 

Anthony spent most of the week lobstering and in the evening we would fish off the seawall. James even caught and reeled in a few fish with his new rod!

 

I caught a few too :)

 

They had a great year for lobster, catching the most they ever have! One trip they got 33 lobsters!! The bag was so heavy it almost broke. The total at the end of the week was 51 lobsters. We ate a lot of them and took some home for the freezer.

 

We had to get a picture of the boys in the big chair while we bought our tickets for the week. These kids are ridiculously adorable.

 

We visited the butterfly conservatory and Rett loved seeing the butterflies for the first time. He ran around finding butterflies on plants and he would touch them with his pointer finger saying, "Fly! Fly". They would just stay still and let him do it! It was the same for James too. I've never seen such calm butterflies. It was like they knew nobody could hurt them.

 

After seeing the butterflies, James and my mom rode the tour train that takes you all around Key West and Anthony, Rett and I had lunch before heading home so Rett could take a nap. It was so strange to have a meal with just one mostly non-verbal child. Anthony and I could actually have a conversation! James and my mom had a blast on the train and they gave him a conductor hat to take home.

 

Thursday our vacation rentals had a scheduled power outage for 4 hours in the morning, so we left the house early with a goal of doing as many things as we could so that we didn't have to come back to no air conditioning. Our first stop was to a pirate treasure museum where you can climb a tower and ring a bell as if you were looking for shipwrecks. We took turns holding Rett and my legs were burning afterwards!

 

Our next stop was the aquarium and we got to watch them feed the sharks. The boys also petted the sting rays for a good amount of time, although in Rett's case it is more like yelling and slapping the water when a sting ray swam by :) It is a small open air aquarium without air conditioning, so we didn't last long in the heat.

 

We still had time before we could go home, so we drove over to a retired coast guard ship that has been turned into a museum. Kids were free, but adults were kind of expensive so only Anthony went with James while the rest of us stayed in the air conditioned car. They had so much fun! James "collected" all of the guns and cannons that he saw by pretending he put them in his pocket.

 Holding up his "collected gun":

 

Friday we checked out a parrot sanctuary we found online. It is in a private residence and the entire backyard is full of cages of different kinds of rescue parrots. Each cage had a sign with information about the parrot and what phrases they say and what they do. This parrot plays peekaboo and waves "hi" to you with his claw when you say hi to him.

 

The owner had one parrot out of his cage to do some demonstrations and James got to help her. He picked out a color on her phone (green of course!) and the parrot created a picture using his tongue to paint. It was so neat!

 

We brought a pool for the boys to play in in the back porch and they turned it into a "wishing well" and put pebbles in it.

The wild roosters were in rare form this year. They loved to hang out around our vacation rental and crow at all hours right outside our window! They woke up Rett from a nap one day and my mom chased it away with a broom. This one woke us up around 7am and I looked outside to see him staring right at our window. Grrrrr.



 

We left early in the morning again to drive home to avoid traffic and got a few pictures of the beautiful sky. It was a great vacation!