Florida Trip - Part 4: Florida Coastal Center, Art Projects, and More Beach House Fun

My apologies ahead of time, but this will be a picture-heavy post with a lot of beach pictures as we are trying to get caught up and many of these pictures turned out too well not to include.  I don't believe it will be that big of an issue since we have yet to have any of our readers complain that we include too many pictures.

Our kids love the ocean, so this beach house vacation was great for them.

I just love Courtney's sun hat.

Looking back on this picture now, I am pretty nervous for Derek given how high up his legs the water got and how strong the undertow could be.

It was a lot of fun to run through the waves.

Lydia did a great job in these pictures - I think they could be in an ad campaign for children's swimwear.

The water crashing over the rocks in the background goes great with Karina's smile in this picture.

Russell ventured out onto the rocks for me here.

Tanja and Courtney.

All our kids holding on tight while the waves crashed and the tide came in.

Tanja found a Groupon for the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center that was nearby the beach house and it looked like a fun activity.  While I was hoping for more interactive attractions than they had, it was interesting and we had a good time.  They had stingrays, all kinds of fish (nurse sharks, tarpons, and many smaller species) swimming around a lagoon, a touch pool, and several injured sea turtles that they cared for.

We started our visit at the stingray pool where we could touch the rays as they swam past.

Hopefully some day we can look back on pandemic photos like this one of Aaron's family and laugh that everyone is wearing masks.

The exciting part of the stingray tank was that we got to feed the stingrays.  To do it, we got a small piece of cut up fish or shrimp or some kind of meat.  We then put our palms flat on the underwater ledge in the pool with the meat held between our fingers and the trained rays would swim up to us and eat the food right from between our fingers.  It was a strange but very cool and ticklish sensation.  Here's Tanja feeding one of the rays.

Even Derek got in on the act (with some help).

Aaron feeding a ray.

At the touch pool, the kids could touch urchins, hermit crabs, and other small sea creatures.

When we went to the sea turtle portion to learn about turtles and see the injured ones living at the center, Derek who is extremely touchy latched on to Maxwell's hand.  We pointed out to them that they were dressed as twins with grey dinosaur shirts and green shorts and at least Derek was excited.

Eventually, I think Maxwell grew tired of Derek's affections as he started to pull away from Derek.  I don't think Derek got the hint.

We then walked on a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp where we saw a few birds until we got to the river where Lydia and Derek decided they needed to go and play on the rocks for a few minutes.

Back at the beach house, we had fun playing in the pool.

Aaron, Courtney, and Karina took a dip in the hot tub.

The beach house had a room stocked with arts and crafts supplies, so Grandma crafted with the kids for an afternoon.

One of the souvenirs we brought back was a great idea Tanja had when she went to the local Hobby Lobby.  She found an assortment of wooden picture frames and letters, so she got a C, D, K, and L for Courtney, Derek, Karina, and Lydia to decorate with shells that we collected on the beach.  We had several excursions to find more shells of particular color schemes or shapes to decorate the letters and frames.

Here's Derek painting his D in advance of gluing on his shells.

And here's Courtney decorating her C with shells.

On the day we originally planned to take family portraits and the camera lens fogged up, Grandma took a few pictures with her phone.  I think this one she took of Derek turned out well.

Here's Lydia at the mangroves along the river.

The swing was a nice place to relax.

 There was a small putting green that everyone tried at some point.

 Allyson and Russell pulled out some horseshoes that were supplied for fun as well.

We took turns pedaling the water trike around the river - it was quite a workout.

Courtney claimed a spot on the swing.

Maxwell claimed a spot along the bank of the river.

And Grandma, Karina, and Courtney claimed a spot on the hammock...

...and somehow convinced Grandpa to fan them with large leaves from a sea grape tree.

These pictures we took against the rocks turned out well.

Tanja found a moment of peace on the swing.

The kids waded out into the river under the dock.

Russell with the mangrove trees.

We managed to find and capture a blue crab on the river one evening.

The sunset that night was spectacular.

Lydia and Russell caught some more fish.

The kids worked together on a large sand castle complex.

Octopus Grandpa captured Lydia and Derek in his tentacles.

As we were leaving, we did our best to clean up the beach house.  Of course, it's always difficult to avoid tracking sand inside when at the beach.  Grandpa found a leaf blower to help blow the sand out, and I thought it was hilarious.  I had visions to Tim Allen on the old Home Improvement TV show saying something to the effect of "This is how a man vacuums!" as I watched him do his part to clean up.

I took a kayak out with our three kids one more time before we had to leave.

We had a great time on this partial family reunion and would love to do something like it again once COVID dies down for good.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for hosting it at this beach house and Aaron/Allyson/Russell/Courtney/Maxwell for making the crazy long journey to come down so we could see you!

One last picture of the cousins lined up oldest to youngest (Russell, Karina, Courtney, Lydia, Maxwell, Derek).