More Miami Quarantine

We continued our quarantine vacation in Miami with lots of swimming and playing.  Nate flew back to Maryland for a week to save his vacation time.

One day Mimi and Derek got haircuts together.  I cut Derek's hair and Mormor cut Mimi's hair. Here is the before picture:

And the after picture:

Karina and Lydia enjoyed many games of chess together:

Snoopy is always the kids' favorite and mine too.  He loves his Miami vacation home, complete with doggy doors and new sniffs in his backyard.  

Derek and Mormor raced across the pool multiple times.  Derek won every time.  He was really into it, trying to go as fast as he absolutely could.  The girls also raced her and won.  (And I don't mean that Mormor let the kids win.  The kids are actually faster than her.)

The pool was a highlight for us every day.

Lydia adores lizards.  She never caught any adult lizards, but she kept catching baby lizards in the patio.  Mimi also caught the baby lizards for her initially.  In the picture below there is a tiny baby lizard in Mimi's hands.  

Lydia got to hold the baby as well.  Lydia named one baby lizard 'Lizzy' and over the course of a week, Lydia would track her down every day and hold her. 

Lizzy on stick:

Lizzy on the leg of a chair:

Lydia and I also kept track of a lizard we named Two-Tail.  She lived on top of a support pillar in the patio, and as her name suggests, she has two tails.  She would hang out in this spot most days, just resting.  It was a good spot, safe from the rain and the aggressive male lizards.

Derek has gotten really interested in writing.  Homeschooling has been wonderful for him in that sense.  He is good at writing all the upper and lower case letters now and spends time every day eagerly writing.  In the picture, Lydia is showing him some stuff in his new dry erase alphabet book.

Mimi continued playing soccer every day with the kids:

Then Nate flew back to Florida to drive us home to Maryland.  Here he is dancing with Lydia and Derek while Karina played piano.

Lydia at the piano:

My parents' mango tree is heavy with mangoes.  They are so delicious and we are anxiously awaiting getting to taste them.  Mangoes from stores don't even begin to compare.

Some final pictures before driving back home:

On the drive home, Snoopy started in his dog bed on the floor of the car.  He soon discovered he would rather sleep between Lydia and Karina on a sheep skin seat with his head on someone's lap.  He is a spoiled dog.

The drive home was only 14 hrs 20 minutes + stops.  Google it should take 15 hrs 30 min with no traffic.  We stopped for a night in Georgia to break up the drive which made it easier than our trip down that we did in one stretch.  Overall, the trip was a big success and it made quarantine and home school much more enjoyable to be in a new environment with a nice pool and seeing Mimi and Mormor.