the final countdown

Oh vacation... sweet vacation...I miss you so.
You were so fabulous - and so good to me.
Now you're gone. Gone, gone, gone.
Break. My. Heart.

In an effort to hang on to beautiful, wonderful, fabulous vacation for as long as I can, I thought I'd post the highlights from our last few days.

Here’s Avery and "MyBecca" (more on her tomorrow) watching David perform a little surgery on the DVD player at the condo after Miller convinced us that the reason the DVD player was not working was because,

“Maybe domebody put doo (2) DBD’s in dere”.

He said it with such sincerity and conviction that it made it hard to know if he actually saw someone shove 2 DVD’s in there at once, or if he was just trying to help us brainstorm possible options.

After my CD player’s ill-fated rendezvous with a penny, we weren’t taking any chances.

Thankfully, we discovered that there was only one DVD in the player after all.

Final Diagnosis: The DVD player must turned ON before it will work. Crazy, complicated, contraption.

Here's a picture of the kiddos eating their lunch on the balcony, where they were served a very fine meal of cheetos (or as Avery calls them "cheetahs") and sandwiches sans crust.
Fancy. Very Fancy.

Avery loves Miller and Carter. She would open her eyes in the morning and say, "MillahCatah" and go to sleep at night saying, "MillahCatah".

Seeing her interact socially with others her age is incredibly interesting. And pretty darn funny, too.

Case in point:
Avery and 4 year-old Carter playing “hospital”.

Carter told Avery to put the baby doll in her tummy, then she told her that they needed to go to the hospital to have the baby.
Next to each other.

I have to say that I’m really glad that real births aren’t like that. I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing that friends should really do together.
Shoe shopping? Yes.
Double Wedding? Maybe,
Birthing a child? No.

Another favorite game of the week was “Choo Choo” train.

Then there was this game:

Apparently, the object of the game was to yank squirt toys out of each other's hands while screaming bloody murder in a teeny, tiny, pool.

I personally love this game the best. Can you guess what it’s called?

It’s the Slide-on-your-rear-in–the-sand-while-making-sand-angels Game
A.k.a.: The-Get-Sand-in-every-crevice-of-your-body Game.

Despite Avery's new found tolerance for sand, we still found ourselves hanging out at the pool quite a bit.

She would say, “Eleven, twelve, Mother’s Day!” before jumping from the edge of the pool into her Daddy’s arms.
We’re not really sure why she added “Mother’s Day” before jumping, but whatever.

While watching them together, I had this flashback to summer vacation in the pool with my Daddy. There’s something really special about seeing your child do the same things that you did as a little girl. It makes my heart happy.

Here’s a picture of something that didn’t happen to me when I was a little girl:

This really large Heron flew over the swimming pool, landed near the deep end, took a drink of water, and then flew off again.

I was told later that his name is George. The residents of the condo feed him Chicken Legs. Evidently, he’s practically tame. There’s even a paper mache statue in the office of George with a chicken leg in his beak.

Yep. You heard me right. A paper mache heron with a chicken leg in his beak.
Niiice.

Anyway - after hearing that story, Maribeth said, “Huh. Isn’t there something really wrong about feeding a bird to another bird?”.

Isn’t it ironic, Don’t cha think?

Something else I found ironic this:

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, you are viewing a picture of yet another restaurant where we were placed far, far, away from any other patrons. This time, instead of being in the "back room", we were seated in the "upstairs room".
Seriously.
Do you like how we are conveniently placed near the restroom?
AND a creepy fish thingy?
Lovely.
What's with Florida and the fish decor? Ugh.

Here's a few insanely cute pictures of my family (I put them in the middle of the post, because by this time, you're already invested and have no choice but to view the cuteness. Mwaha hahaha...):



The Malahy’s headed home a day early, so David and I took Avery and Charlie to an outdoor mall with a great little play area on our last day of vacation.






AND I'm done.
Sadly.

Now back to reality.