Catching Crabs....

The kids and I have been in Amelia for the last ten days... 

It sounded good on paper....

Three idyllic weeks in Florida... 

Letting the kids play in the pool, make sand castles on the beach, 

forget about schedules, camps 

and baseball games and just be kids for awhile...

 

And it's been mostly that...

Well, not counting the time outs, whining 

and Kate nearly losing her front teeth 

on the granite countertop today....

You can thank Jack for that one... 

Friends with kids close to the same age 

as Jack and Kate spent last week with us...

Let's face it... 

You gotta have buddies to keep the kids from killing each other...  

And it worked... 

They went nuts in the pool...  

They performed shows for us of great gymnastic feats... 

Posed with giant shrimp....

Hung out with pirates...

Ate liked starved dogs... 

And wore themselves out everyday...

We moms enjoyed conversations 

that lasted three minutes at a time versus thirty seconds... 

We drank a few glasses of wine.... 

Okay a lot ...  

Life was good....  

Now that the kids and I are on our own for a week or so, I am panicking... 

Without friends for distraction, I needed to find things 

for my darling children to do instead of devising ways to:

A. irritate each other...  

B. irritate me.... 

or C. destroy the planet...  

Luckily The Plantation has plenty of activities to amuse kids...  

The Nature Center offers kayak trips, beach digs for clams and shark teeth, fishing, turtle feeding and hiking.  There are tennis lessons, golf lessons, Segway tours and bike rentals. 

At the Beach Club pool, there are daily things to do, 

such as crafts, balloon busting contests, water relays, dive in movies, 

smore's roasts on the beach and volleyball games.  

We hit the clay courts this morning....  

The pro has a blank slate with Kate, but she listened and tried her best... 

Jack's swing looks good... 

and he actually enjoyed it after resisting 

and complaining that tennis is not intense enough...  

Little does he realize being his mom 

is a high intensity, high impact sport as it is....   

Next on the fun list was the "Crab Grab"...  

We golf carted to Walker's Landing 

and met Jessica from the Nature Center to fish for some crab...  

The floating dock faced a marsh 

and the intercoastal waterway... 

Jessica baited two crab traps 

and two sets of string and weights with chicken necks...

Apparently crabs eat mor chikin...haha! 

The kids dropped the bait off the dock and anxiously waited. 

They wanted to check the lines every three seconds...

Crabs take their time to nibble, I guess...

In the meantime, the kids caught miniature shrimps 

and tiny crabs that hung out on the dock posts...  

Easily caught, they provided instant gratification... 

Within minutes, Kate caught a good sized blue crab in her crab trap... 

They are feisty little buggers, but such an exciting catch... 

Luckily, Jack caught his own crab in his trap soon after.. 

God forbid this crabbing competition not be even... 

I would certainly not hear the end of it should be bounty be uneven....

Jessica then released the cranky crabs onto the dock 

and they scuttled into the brackish water, pronto.  

After the crab adventure, the kids pooled it 

and later watched a scratched version of Alvin and the Chipmunks 

at the Dive In Movie...  

At one point the blow up screen collapsed 

after they monkeyed with the bad disc for about twenty minutes...  

They must have used the dvd's from our car.....  

Overall, today I wore the little buggers out

and I even got to enjoy a cool and swirly beverage... 

Tomorrow will be a session at the beach 

to dig for clams and search for shark's teeth, 

followed by more pool time... 

Amazingly, the kids are tired of the beach and pool...

If any of you, preferably with kids, would like to join us next week, 

COME ON DOWN!  

I could use a wingman!