Visit to Miami: Part 2 of 2

While in Miami, we spent a few hours in the pool every day.  We had both a morning session and an afternoon session.  I enjoyed it because my back didn't hurt in the pool.   The kids always thought it was a blast.

We ate and ate mangoes during our visit.  I didn't get any pictures of the mangoes, but my dad had already removed all the mangoes from their tree when we arrived, as we slowly ate them all over the next 11 days.  We ate plain mangoes and mango smoothie (with only mango and sometimes some ice/water mixed in for consistency ).  The kids were good mango monsters, and when we left, my parents only had a minimal amount of mango in the freezer remaining, because we had eaten a huge tree's worth.  

There were also coconuts on their coconut tree.  We had some yummy coconut water.  I have never liked store-bought coconut water, but fresh from the tree, it was actually delicious.  Mango from my parents' tree also tastes nothing like store-bought mango.

Besides our usual game of Marco Polo, we played a lot of monkey-in-the-middle too.  It worked best with Mimi in the middle.  

Here we are exploring mangrove trees at Matheson Hammock park.    We were counting how many iguanas we could find.  The kids also collected sea pencils from the mangroves.

Lydia found an old coffee grinder and thought it was great fun to manually grind coffee (Mormor usually uses an electric grinder). Karina joined in too.

Derek got two swimming lessons from Mimi every day.  He is an expert at swimming with his floatie on, and loves the water.  However, he was terrified at the thought of swimming on his own.  By the end of our visit after many lessons, Derek could actually swim alone across the width of the pool, but Derek didn't know or wouldn't acknowledge it.  He wanted to constantly confirm that Mimi was holding his shirt.  Mimi could sneak his hand off Derek's shirt and have Derek swim alone, but Derek would panic if he knew Mimi wasn't holding him.  Derek was never willing to knowingly swim unaided, as he was convinced he would drown.  Hopefully he'll have more confidence next time, because he can actually swim. 

Mormor made Lydia's favorite apple cake.

More fun in the pool, since that is where we spent half the day, every day.

When we flew back to Maryland, my back still wasn't 100%.  The lady at the ticket counter was nice enough to give Mimi a gate pass, and he was able to go through airport security with us and wait with us at the gate.  It was a late flight, and the kids were tired.