TEA TIME

She is such a girl!

Really, I don't know where she gets it from.

D-O-D-G-E ... HORN!

Joey was reading an ABC book in the car.
The picture for A showed a long line of ants.


Joey: "Look Mommy! A says La, La, La... lotta ants!"


Which reminds me:


When I was almost 3, I was playing in the driver's seat of my parent's Minnie Winnie. (a small motorhome, a Winnebago)


Michelle: "Look Daddy! I can read! D-O-D-G-E ... HORN!"
(Those were the letters spelled out across the horn, that I then beeped.)


Like mother, like daughter.

ANOTHER ZOO DAY.

Joey is NEVER going to get tired of the zoo.

 Doyle, Nikki & Maddie joined us a few weekends ago for a trip to the zoo.

 Another special discount weekend, by accident. As an annual pass holder, I need to stop going when everyone else is.

 I swear they had more fun with the fake animals then the real ones.

 Yeah... I don't know.

 The water play area in front of Amazon is a great way for the kids to cool off. Now they just need more shade for the adults on the sidelines.

 Maddie looks like she's being birthed, not pooped.

 What else did you expect from Mark?

 The father's couldn't be more proud.

PINK! BLUE!

Joey and I have a new game.
We call it "PINK & BLUE"


She started it.
 She was playing with one of her dress up wands. She looked at me, waved her wand and did her best to say Cinderella's Godmother's incantation "Salicadoo, la mentrica boo, la bibbity bobbidy, boo!" And then yelled out "PINK!"
I blinked and looked at her. (Since she was smooshing different scenes from different movies together, it took me a moment.)
Joey: "Mommy, you're pink!"
Mommy: "Ooohh! I got it!... BLUE!" and I ducked behind the corner so she couldn't get a clear shot at me. 
Joey: "PINK!"(giggling and smiling and just so thrilled.)
Mommy: "Uh uh! You can't see me! If you can't see me, you can't get me!


And so we spent some time running around the kitchen divide (and the rest of the house), ducking behind couches and tables, shrieking PINK and BLUE at each other and driving Mark crazy.


This has become one of our regular games to play now.


NOTE** For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about... 

• We're you EVER a child!?!
• You need to watch Sleeping Beauty straight away.
• It is the scene when Mistress Flora & Mistress Maryweather are fighting over what color to make Rose's dress. They keep turning the dress, each other, and anything else that gets in the way, PINK or BLUE.

RAINY SUNDAY AFTERNOON ATTIRE

Our house slippers, a blanket and a movie.

Rainy Sunday afternoon.

JOEY'S JACK O' LATERN

Joey helped Mommy carve the pumpkin this year.

She picked out the picture, she "supervised" all my work, she helped scrap the inside of the pumpkin, and picked up the stray flying seeds.

Joey understands that Halloween is about 3 things:

Scaring people, eating candy and dressing in costume.

Right now, Halloween is beginning edge out Christmas as her favorite holiday.

Pretty neat, huh?!

JUST KEEP SWIMMING, JUST KEEP SWIMMING...

Joey is just a swimming fool. She has her maintenance lessons, twice a week, (Thank you Grandma!) and then any body's house she visits she wants to swim there too. (This is Florida, practically everyone she knows has a pool.)

 Below, is Mom-mom watching Joey & Mark swim in her pool. 

We didn't even have a bathing suit with us that day, but in she went anyways.

It's too cold for me now. But she doesn't mind. 

I fully intend to have her snorkeling with a mask and fin next summer.

TOMATO COKE

Mark had a case of V8 cans in the back of her truck.
Joey noticed it, climbing in the truck when being picked up from school.
Joey: "Can I have a coke?"
Mark: "No, that's tomato juice."
Joey: "Can I have a tomato coke?"


Mark decided to let her. And boy was she excited. It was coke, cause' it was in a can, but it was smaller, so that it made it Joey size, and she loves tomatoes.


She did not, however, love "tomato coke" she discovered.

BEACHIN' WITH GRANDMA

Grandma, Joey and I went to the Raccoon Beach over Labor Day weekend. 

(Pics taken on Mark's waterproof camera and then forgotten about)

"Racoon Beach" is actually "Billy Baggs State Park". I called it Raccoon Beach growing up cause', well, obviously, cause' of all the raccoons that were there. (Saw one there this time too, but too quick for my camera.)

 You have to be 8 or older to climb to the top of the lighthouse so I only have the pic of Joey looking out the bottom window. But we did tour the keeper's house and the rest of the historic display. 

 Joey really loves to build sandcastles. More then being in the water, by far. (She totally ignores Grandma's engineering directions though, and I took pleasure out of watching that.)

 You know, it's a shame how infrequently we come to the beach, given we live in Miami.

I think we'll start coming more often. 

PLAYING THE ELEPHANT

Mark put on some Jazz music one evening to listen to while going about the kitchen.


Joey: Who's that?
Mark: Duke Ellington. (already smiling, pleased that she seem to be taking a liking a jazz)
Joey: He's playing the elephant!
Mark: (pausing for a moment) Huh?
Joey: Yeah, the man, he plays the elephant!
Mark:  (after thinking on it) Oh,  oh, oh! You mean the saxophone!


Please recall to your mind the DISNEY movies TARZAN & DUMBO. In TARZAN, during the trashing the camp sequence, TANTOR uses a funnel and makes music. (he sounds like a whole range of horns, from Tubas to trumpets, depending on how he scrunches up his trunk.) In DUMBO, during the pink elephants sequence, there is a part where their trunks also turn into trumpets. 


When Joey hears any part of the horn section, she sees elephants.
She wants to play the elephant too!

FLAMINGO POINT BOAT RIDE

The boat ride, on the bay side, from the Keys house to Flamingo Point is a very beautiful ride.

You have to know where you are going, as it is not marked with traditional channel markers except for a few points.

But it is a very smooth ride, due to how very shallow it is most of the way. You can see the drag marks just a little bit to either side of the channel, where drunker before you swayed from the path and got stuck.

 It never fails. A long boat ride will lull and child to sleep.

Such beautiful scenery.

The clouds, a thousand islands in the sky, to match the thousand islands below.

We found out that the boat lift has been closed since Hurricane Wilma, several years ago.

So we had a nice picnic lunch, bought some funny lookin' (but very useful) hats, and headed back the way we came.

(We had thought to make a whole day trip of it, going through the inter-coastal to Naples and then back around the coast, but that will have to be another day.)

Someone was more rested and alert on the return trip.

Flamingo Point boat ride

JOEY'S 1ST JEPOARDY QUESTION

We watching Jepoardy last night with Grandma & Grandpa.
The catergory was something to the effect of "Songs about girls."

The answer was something like this: "In the movie RIO, a song refers to a girl from this location."

I started to sing "The girl from Imponema" the way that the George Lopez does in the movie.

Joey: "Ooh, Mommy, that is the song from Rio!"

I count that as Joey getting her first Jeopardy question right.

THE LITTLE FARM

The LITTLE FARM is in Homestead.

I think it's about once a month, for $8.00 a pop, you can come in and visit.

They have a petting zoo, little horse rides, milking and feeding goats, a butterfly garden...

It really is great!

Above, Joey was practicing for the real thing, below.

Joey REALLY wants her own chick.

Besides the little pig (it was his first day) all the animals are super friendly and let the little ones grab all over them.

Joey didn't want to milk the goat. (She still talks about milking cows, thanks to her visit to the M&B PRODUCTS farm in March, but the goat just wasn't the same thing.)

Feeding the baby goats was probably her favorite part.

 Inside the butterfly garden.

(I need to go back and by some of the right plants so that butterflies will come to our house.

Jungle Island blow up slide

JUNGLE ISLAND

Jungle Island is too expensive for us locals. 

It is $30 an adult. That is why we had never been before.

However, this past Labor Day, they had a NABOR day special (pronounce it NEIGHBOR).

Tickets were $10 for residents, and for another $10, you could upgrade to an annual pass.

So we took Joey.

I don't have more pictures then this, however, because though Joey held and took pictures with birds, snakes, crocodiles, skunks and rabbits, you can't use your camera, and it is $50 bucks for a CD of all the pics they took for you.

Sorry, too expensive. 

I got the elephant, because it was $15 for all 3 of us to ride, and came with the pic.

It is, a beautiful place, has great shows and some neat animals that the zoo doesn't even have. So I can see why tourists would pay $30.