Friday, December 23, 2011

'interesting' Key West recap day 1 & 2

Don't worry I won't bore you with a full recap of every day, but these first couple days had some really interesting moments that I wanted to share.

weapon and bomb talk in the middle of airport security
I am sure that I'm not the only parent to experience this, but it's still kind of scary/funny. Ellie is very curious right now, asking questions about EVERYTHING. And of course she wanted to know why she had to take her shoes off at security. She asked that long before we got to the airport, and not being ones to hide things from her, Seth explained that it was because someone tried to blow up a plane using a bomb in his shoe. We discussed how dumb that was not to mention mean, bad etc. But then when we got to security and she was taking her shoes off, she says, "Mommy why would do kids have to take off their shoes, why would a KID want to blow up a plane?" I shushed her and told her they wouldn't and to talk about it later and we moved on.

Then Seth forgot to remove his multi-tool swiss army knife thing, so he had an extended secondary search where they took it from him. and as we walked away she asks, "Why did Daddy try to take a knife on the plane?" LOL! oh my!

fast forward past the running through the airport to make our connection which they were actually holding for us (and the other 8 people making the same connection). fast forward past the airline losing the GATE CHECKED car seat, and past the scare that Kenny and Phyllis had when their house sitter said that their heat was broken (with the dogs there) and on to Ellie reading the sign for the Half Shell raw bar that is supposed to have a slightly sexual connotation, as she says, "Why do they want you to eat it raw" LOL

other than that drama - here is what we've been seeing:
I don't know why, but I love this photo. I think it just really tells the story. She is so intent on swimming, so matter of fact. It's adorable. I also love the ocean in the background.
Here it's just her pure joy. Swimming swimming and more swimming!
and here is what I got from playing with the silhouette setting on my new camera. That is seth sitting oceanside reading, while I am sitting poolside watching Ellie and playing with my camera.


moving on to day 2.

Look Ellie an Egret! Don't look at the Egret Ellie!
Driving down the road we see an Egret on the side of the road, and happen to stop beside it at a light. "Look Ellie, Look! It's an egret, isn't it pretty?" and then the egret proceeds to grab a small lizard that REALLY closely resembles her beloved pet Queen Julia, and SLOWLY eat the wriggling creature. Ellie rolled down her window and screamed at the bird to no avail of course. I thought for sure she was going to start crying. Then we talked about the circle of life and how Queen Julia eats crickets.

Ellie meets her first inmates
We headed on to the Monroe County Correctional Facility to the Animal Rescue farm that they have there. A while ago they started collecting abused, abandoned or neglected animals and housing them in an area under the correctional facility (which is built up on concrete pylons to withstand hurricanes. They have all manner of livestock along with a python, emu, lemur, crocodile, ferrets, birds, rodents and a bunch of tortoises. (Im sure I forgot something) Ellie got to pet a galapagos tortoise, a ferret, a bunny, a pony, and hold a baby crocodile. She also got her face painted. The inmates were the ones holding the animals, so then of course we had to talk about what 'inmate' means - lol. It was interesting to say the least.
She looks less than happy here, but that's only because I made her slow down for a second so I could take her picture. She was LOVING petting this tortoise!
Nothing makes her hold back, the other kids were petting, but Ellie asked if she could HOLD the alligator (crocdile? Im not sure)
And here is the ferret. She was asking him all kinds of questions about it. 

So far key west has been a definite learning experience for ellie!

Of course, face painting, for some unknown reason was the highlight. She breezed right past Santa - I don't even think she realized he was there. (which was ok because we had already seen Santa and I really kinda didn't want her coming up with something ELSE that she HAD to have from Santa - like the picture of his reindeer that she asked for the first time) Anyway, she breezed right past Santa, stopped briefly at a few animals and zeroed in on the face painting. I knew they had face painting, it was one of the selling points to me to take her there, but I didn't tell her ahead of time just in case. She waited patiently in line for what seemed like forever! The other kids were leaving their parents in line and looking at the nearby animals - not ellie! She refused to budge from the line. She was THAT intent on the face painting. And this is what she got - a polar bear. LOL! She really has the worst luck with face painting 'artists'this was the second try, because the first time the red from the hat dripped and it looks REALLY macabre. This one only looks like a skeleton - lol.

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