Dolphin Watching

We spent almost 5 hours out one day watching dolphins and snorkeling. We actually snorkeled so much while we were in Key West that J got two blisters on his toes from the fins!! Anyway, this day were were on a smaller boat. It only held 6 people plus our Captain. He actually lives on the boat and knew alot about dolphins and most other sea creatures. We went out into the ocean to look for dolphins and pretty quickly found a mom and baby. We followed them around for along time and they would swim right up to the boat.

Here's J and I relaxing in the shade watching for dolphins!!
Taking pictures of dolphins is not easy. They are fast!! I managed to get a few pics where you can actually tell it's a dolphin.

If you look very closely at this one where one dolphin has it's fin out of the water you can see there is another dolphin right beside it still in the water. This was the mom and baby.

Here's J getting some sun on our way to go snorkeling! I can't BELIEVE I didn't think to get a pic with our snorkeling gear on.....oh well.

On this snorkeling trip we saw several fish, lots of sponges, and lots of lobsters. The lobsters kind of made me nervous!! J said he touched the antenna on one, but I tried to just stay on top of the water and away from lobster antenna and claws. We also saw a couple of HUGE rays, but luckily that was also from the boat and not while we were in the water! It was a fun way to start the day. We had packed a lunch so after snorkeling we had a picnic lunch on the boat as we rode back to Key West. Island life is so fun!!

Dry Tortugas

Jay and I just spent a week in Key West with some friends. We had a ton on fun and I'm going do try and do a couple of blogs to tell you about our escapades! Instead of saving the best for last, I'm going to do the best first. We took a day trip to the Dry Tortugas. This is an island 70 miles west of Key West. It is literally at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. It took us a little over two hours to get there by boat, but it was worth it. The island was discovered by Ponce de Leon and the U.S. later built a fort most of the way around the island. There were over 16 million bricks used to build the fort. It was later turned into a prison and is now a National Park. We climbed to the top of the fort and took this picture (I had problems uploading my pics so they are a little out of order).


Most of the "holes" you see are for where the cannons would have been sticking out. The also had their own cannon ball making factory at the fort.

That is J out in the water just coming back from snorkeling. The snorkeling on the island was great!! The water was very calm and on one side of the island there was a beautiful, brightly colored reef that had cute fish of all colors swimming around. We snorkeled there together. J then when to another part of the island that had nurse sharks and barracudas and things of that sort. I opted to lay on the beach for that one, but he LOVED it! Those bigger fish make me nervous.

Just so you can see how clear the water is there, I took a picture of my feet knee deep in the water. Amazing.

This is J and I on top of the fort checking out the view and snapping a few pics.

J inside the fort.

And this was the boat we took to the island. It was called the "Fast Cat". The boat ride was really fun!!! It was pretty bumpy for awhile on the way back, but that made it even better to us. It was like being on a roller coaster! Some other people didn't fare so well and got seasick, but we had taken Dramamine and felt great. It was a great day and if you are ever in Key West I would recommend you take a day and go to Dry Tortugas.

Frog giggin'

Aimee and Wayne took Jay and I frog giggin' this past weekend. What else would you expect us to be doing on Saturday night!?!? It was the first time that Jay or I had ever been, but lucky for us we were with experts. Wayne got a frog not 5 minutes after we got to the first pond. At this point I was holding the grass sack that you put all of the frogs in, as I wasn't sure yet if I wanted to gig a frog. I went to where Wayne was at since I had the grass sack and screamed when he put the frog in the bag. I helped Wayne find another frog and then screamed again when he gigged it. I only screamed two other times the rest of the night and that was when I gigged two frogs myself. Even though about 20 frogs were murdered that night, we had a good time trying something new and hanging out with Aimee and Wayne.

Here's J and Wayne looking very happy to be showing off some frogs.......

I wanted to get my pic holding a frog but I just couldn't bring myself to touch one. Wayne suggested I just use the pliers and hold up a leg. You can see in the pic below that as I'm joking around acting like I'm going to eat an uncooked frog leg with skin still on it, Wayne thinks it would be a good idea to push it closer to my mouth. Not funny Wayne.

When Wayne got the legs skinned Aimee washed them and then put them in a salt water soak.

I just thought this pic was cool because it captured the grains of salt in mid-air.

So, did I eat the frog legs? Absolutely not. Aimee and Wayne have quite a few in their freezer. I think they are hoping to have a frog leg fry one night. If anyone is interested in going frog giggin' they are great instructors. Thanks again to Aimee and Wayne for taking us along!

Want to see a lizard nest?

I don't recall ever seeing a lizard nest, but tonight I accidentally came across one while moving some of the decorative stones in our front yard. At first I thought it was a snake, and believe it not I didn't even scream. Aimee, I'm sure you probably don't believe this considering how many times I screamed when dealing with frogs, but it's true. Anyway, I tried to get a couple of pics, but I was making Momma Lizard very nervous and she was moving around alot which made most of the pics blurry. I did get one good one though, take a look.....
This was the best one I got. There were about ten eggs in the nest. Which is fine by me as long as they eat spiders as soon as they hatch.

This one is blurry, but I thought you could tell a little better that it was a lizard and not a snake.

When Mommy and Daddy are away....

Aunt Steph and Uncle Jay let Parker play downtown in his underwear!!

We went to Taste of Nashville today where there were 50 area restaurants set up with food to try. It was free to go, but you bought tickets (10 for $12) and then different foods were different ticket amounts. We all got to eat whatever we wanted. To J and I the food was the best part, but to Parker the water (that just happened to be by where the Taste of Nashville was set up) was definitely the best part. He started in the "wading pools" where he promptly sat down and drenched his shorts. So, we just took them off. Yep, that's his underwear he's running around in. Evidently the ladies liked it though because he found a girlfriend very quickly (she's the one in pink in the video).


Don't worry, Mommy, he had on plenty of sunscreen and luckily Aunt Steph took an entire change of clothes.

The water felt great since it was so hot out today so both J and I put our feet in too!

Parker was so funny running and screaming in this fountain....as you can see from the video. He liked to try and stop the water with his butt and his feet! He didn't want to leave but after an hour Aunt Steph was so hot she talked him into going to get a drink and a frozen banana popsicle.

And yes, he fell asleep on the way home!

Picture time

Here's what it's like trying to get a picture of Parker and Tracie together - not easy!!

Parker playing with Tracie's necklace instead of looking a the camera.....

Parker with a mouth full of bread.....

Both Parker and Tracie not looking at the camera.....bear in mind I am directly in front of them saying, "Look at the camera!"....

Trace remembers to look at the camera, but Parker gets distracted....again....

This was the best shot I got, and the sun was so bright Parker's face is shaded by his cap. Oh well, it's still a pretty cute pic!

What did we do before digital cameras and memory cards!?!?

Bird Man

Parker likes to chase pigeons. We were at the park yesterday and logged some excellent pigeon chasing time. Here is Parker eyeing the pigeons from across the way. He is in "on your mark, get set, go mode"...
Running toward and screaming at the pigeons....

Still running and screaming....I think stomping was added at this point as the birds weren't too scared.

Giving up trying to scare them, giving them bread crumbs as an afternoon snack.

My Back Yard

In this corner of the yard there is over 3 feet of water. Notice Parker's car floating around in the lake we've got.

Its hard to tell because these are camera phone pictures, but on this side the water is above the swings on the playset.

I made these about 9:00am, and there isn't much hope of the rain letting up today.

Flood Chasers

Mom and Dad are at our house this weekend. Mom and I decided to brave the rain and go to the store this afternoon. Here are some of the pics Mom took of the flooding around our neighborhood and Mt. Juliet.....
This is our neighborhood pond. It's not usually so high that it is in peoples actual back yards, but we thought this was a nice shot with the bird doing some fishing!

These two pics are of a strip mall close to our neighborhood on Mt. Juliet road. Not good.

We had passed this strip mall going to the store and when we were finished grocery shopping and heading home the road was blocked. We had to take an alternate route home!

This is a pic from the road that runs by the back side of our neighborhood. Usually, a small stream is running where you see the massive flooding overtaking the tractor.

It will be interesting to see if it is even worse tomorrow!!! Eeek!

Little Ballerina

On Saturday we were invited to Hallie's dance recital at the Cookeville Drama Center. Hallie's been dancing since she was just little bitty! This year she was in three of the performances. Not only is she a ballerina, but she also takes tap lessons. Hallie of course was the star of the show, an excellent dancer and her smile on stage was the best! Good job Hallie and thanks for including us!
As cute as Hallie was, you should have seen the baby ballerinas!