Vacation: Day 3 (posted by Steven)

Friday, June 14th:  This was our first full day in Key West.  Like the day before, I took the boys to breakfast so Tiffany could sleep a little more.  This time, Tyler stayed and snuggled with Tiffany.  The first adventure on our agenda was a 28-mile wave-runner tour around the island.   We had to check-in by 9:30am, for the 10:00 tour.  Luckily, the tour company (Barefoot Billy's) was on our hotel's property.

This is where we put sunscreen on all the children and waited for the Crews and the other Fegers to get to our hotel:

While waiting for the staff to fuel the wave-runners, the kids found coconuts and cracked them on the rocks.  They ran out of coconuts to crack, so we tried hoisting Dylan up a palm tree to get more.

After a short briefing by the staff, we were ready to go. Isaac & I went on one waver-runner, Dylan went with Andre, Noah with Darren, Malia with Corrie, and Barbie was on a single.  Tiffany stayed at the hotel with Tyler.

All the kids loved the wave-runners.  It was a bit choppy on the Atlantic side of the island, so Isaac flopped around like a rag doll.  He was brave though and most of the kids said that this tour was their favorite part of the 5-day vacation.  The tour stopped in a few locations.  At one stop, the guide pointed out one of Oprah's houses.  At another stop, we saw a family of dolphins.  Some of the dolphins came right up to the wave-runners, but I wasn't ready with the camera. Sorry.  We also got about 20-30 minutes of free time to ride around on our own.  Andre let Dylan drive almost this whole time and Isaac got to control ours.

Since our hotel passed out free watermelon in the mornings and had bowls of fruit for the taking, this is what Tiffany & Tyler did while we were gone:

 And this:

 Then this:

Each day, our hotel also offered different craft activities for kids.  So after the tour, the kids painted starfish and wooden iguana/lizards. We missed the activity the day before, which was making shark teeth necklaces, but Tiffany asked the the activity person for some materials from the day before to fix Dylan's alligator necklace that we just bought for him at the gator place on Day 1 of the vacation. Not only was Tiffany able to fix Dylan's necklace, but they also gave her a shark's tooth for the kids.

Then the kids went swimming.  This is right before, I flipped the kids over:

and a friendly staff member gave the kids popsicles:

We then ate lunch at Willie T's.  This is another place that we usually go to at least once per trip.  As you can see in the photos, they have tons of $1 bills all over the walls.  The kids wanted to take the money.  While waiting for our food to come, Noah posed on stage:

Tyler slept through lunch:

While walking down Duval Street after lunch, we came across this place that had some delicious-looking fudge in the window.  We couldn't resist and went in.  This is me talking the kids into getting a less expensive treat, so Tiffany and I wouldn't have to share our fudge:

After lunch, we went back to the hotel.  We tried to get the kids to nap, so we could stay up a little later.  I was the only one who slept though.  Then, it was back to the pool.  I gave Tyler a swim lesson and he made some good progress on kicking/wiggling to the wall on his own with his face in the water.

While I stayed at the pool with Dylan and Tyler, Tiffany took Isaac to go hunting for small hermit crabs that were all over the rocks on the shoreline.  This was one of Isaac's favorite things to do:

For dinner we had pizza at Rick's.  The place is actually called Angelina's, but we've always called it Rick's because we sit in the small courtyard in front of Rick's bar.  Dinner here is always a top priority on every trip to Key West.

 Tyler was glued to the video games while waiting for the pizza:

 While eating pizza, spiderman happened to walk by.  He was sweaty, but the kids didn't care:

After our pizza dinner, we headed to Mallory Square a little earlier than the night before so we wouldn't miss the sunset again.  On the walk there, Tiffany broke her flip flop when somebody stepped on its back, but Barbie and Andre saved the day by buying her some new flip flops.  They even matched her shirt! We bought some juice drinks that were served in a pineapple shell.
 
Isaac (and his shirt) couldn't get enough of this pineapple.  Even though they were hollowed out pretty well, he managed to scrape out more of the lining:

Sunset:

We watched a few street performers: 

 The kids wanted to watch the Fire Lady again:

We thought the night was over after heading back to the hotel, but as we walked by the pool area, the kids noticed that the hotel was having a "dive-in" movie night.  The kids initially said that they just wanted to watch for a few minutes from a distance, but then Isaac noticed that there were some empty lawn chairs much closer to the screen so we eventually moved up to watch The Lorax all the way to the end.

End of Day 3.