August 26th, 2019 – First day of school!

Its 9:42 am. I’ve taken a break from writing blog posts to focus more on getting some grant writing done in the mornings, but I wanted to write down Harvey and Alexandra’s first day of school experience.

 

Keira and I got up around 6:45 am, and I was getting stuff for the kids and me ready until 7:30 am or so when Yingying went up stairs to get them. I quickly followed and grabbed Harvey and brought him down. I changed his diaper and put on the new pull ups. He had strawberries and melon for breakfast, I had my usual bowl of oats, sunflower seeds, blueberries, cacao, and bananas. Alexandra had a strawberry, some melon, and bread with butter and jam. They were done with breakfast around 8:10 or so, and I was done getting ready at 8:15. Alexandra wanted to put on her new car shoes with lights, but they don’t have a lift so she couldn’t wear those. She was very upset.

 

I got all the stuff in the car, filling up the passenger seat in the front. Then we drove to Miss Mollies. We walked down the sidewalk to school around 8:52 with the kids carrying their lunchboxes and wearing their backpacks. At the door, Julian and his mom Kate were also waiting to get in. After Michell and Pastor David Brooks let us in, the kids put their lunch boxes in the bin, I took Alexandra then Harvey to the bathroom, and I was out of there around 9:10 am. Then I had to drop their change of clothes off at Meme’s. The woman there put the stuff on a hook so I wrote an email to the owner letter her know and asking her if we could put that stuff somewhere it could be more known where it was for more permanent storage. Then I’m back at work writing this!

 

I hope the kids do ok today. I’m worried that Harvey may have a difficult time in the afternoon getting to Meme’s and spending time there when he’s tired. But I guess he’ll be fine.

August 16th, 2019 – Crabs

After my blog on the 14th, Keira and I went out to try to catch some crabs. I told her I could easily catch ten crabs. We could easily see the crabs with our iphone flash lights, chase them down, and catch them in a net we found in the condo. It was fun to chase the crabs, they will go back and forth trying to avoid you. And they are pretty fast. After we got a bucket full, we let most of them go, but kept a couple to show the kids.

 

Yesterday we went to Washington oaks in the morning. We got quite hot walking around the garden, and pretty quickly went to the playground so the kids could have some fun. It rained in the afternoon and evening, so we went to eat ice cream. We also took a short walk on the boardwalk near the condo.

 

Today we went to the condo’s playground in the morning, then caught the boat to Fort Matanzas. There was a colony of small crabs on the island.  We came back and had some spaghetti for lunch. The kids went to take a nap after watching some Pocoyo, and I went outside to boogie board. I also did some Nanoscale work, finished my queue of papers. Decided to get the blog down so I could relax in the evening. We’re heading back to Durham tomorrow.

August 14th, 2019 – The Largest Indoor Pool

This morning we went down to St. Augustine again and parked in the municipal garage for $15. We had the kids play on the playground by the parking garage for ~30 min, then started to walk across town towards the hotel Alcazar. We stopped at many stores that Alexandra wanted to go in so she could see what’s inside. We needed the breaks in the AC because it was so hot. The walk that google maps said would take 15 min actually took 45 min. We were very happy to arrive at the hotel Alcazar café, especially me since I had to carry Harvey for awhile.

 

The hotel Alcazar was built in 1888 and had at the time what was likely the largest indoor pool in the world. See old pictures here https://lightnermuseum.org/history/ .When they talked about the indoor pool on the trolley ride the day before I was intrigued, so we decided to make a reservation to have lunch there. It was fun to eat inside the large hall and think about the pool that used to be there. There was even a guy playing the piano. The food was not that great, kind of barely ok, and it was overpriced. But I didn’t care that much. In the end, Yingying paid for lunch, which was very nice of her.

 

After lunch we headed back across town, got back in the car, and stopped at the grocery store. Alexandra wanted to get an umbrella, so Keira bought that for her. Alexandra is kind of obsessed with umbrellas. At home Harvey and I took a nap together for a few hours, Alexandra slept with grandma. Keira looked at her phone then went to cook. Dinner was some soup with tomatoes and potatoes, rice, cabbage, and sweet and sour baby pork ribs.

 

After dinner, Harvey, and I went out to the beach. Keira had already gone out early to boogie board. Alexandra didn’t want to go so she stayed home with grandma. On the beach I dug a big trench between the two piles of sand I made the day before, which were still there. I poured water in the trench but it didn’t go very far. I boogie boarded a little bit but the waves were not so big and I didn’t want to leave Keira with Harvey too long. Pretty soon Harvey wanted a bottle, so Keira brought him in.  I walked down the beach. On the way back I saw dolphins in the water and I went out into the ocean to say hi. They come up pretty close to me, then I got a bit scared because they are wild animals. I didn’t know what would happen if we came into contact. In any case, we didn’t. Keira also saw the dolphins when she was boogie boarding but she thought they were sharks and ran away.