We started off with a trip to Lincoln Center to see the Nutcracker...I went a number of times when I was much younger, but this was Ben's first time...
After the ballet, Ben and Gail took a seat on the fountain before heading downtown, while I met my friend Derek before joining them back at my parents' place...
On Christmas Eve, we had a mellow family dinner and afterwards Ben and Brad and Auntie Ann built a gingerbread house for the table centerpiece for our Christmas Dinner...
Here is the finished product...
Christmas morning, Gail and Ben did some reading while waiting for everyone to arrive...
This isn't a perfect picture of Ben, but the bubbles are really cool...
Ben and Brad and D all got musical ties from Santa, and had lots of fun playing with them...for hours...again and again and again...
3 generations of Sheffield men opening presents on Christmas morning of 2009...
After Christmas Dinner, we headed uptown, to visit with my grandmother, who will be 100 years old in less than 4 months...we shared some presents and Christmas cheer...we're so lucky that Ben and his great-grandmother know each other...
The day after Christmas, we headed out early in the morning, and were in our rented house in Key West by early afternoon...Ben got in the pool ASAP, and only got out a few times for the whole week that we were there...
Besides a super house (and nice little outbuilding that Gail and Ben and I lived in), there were gorgeous plantings throughout the grounds of the house...I played with the macro feature on my new camera a bit, and came up with this neat picture...
There was even a mini-grove of banana plants...
The following day, Ben and Muz and Gail and I went to a fantastic butterfly conservatory, which had dozens (hundreds?) of beautiful species of butterflies and some great birds...
Ben looped through a couple of times, really enjoying being able to study the butterflies up close and personal...
More macro-play with my new camera and a pretty butterfly...
After the conservatory, we walked to the southernmost point in the US...
Back to the pool for some snorkeling...
This little guy was one of 3.47 gazillion tiny lizards that scampered all over the grounds around the house that we rented...
Some of the plantings around the house were epiphytes...gaining their moisture and nutrients from the plants on which they live...Ben loved the idea of the self-contained ecosystems, and also loved the snail that lived in the plant on the left...
On one morning when it was raining a bit, we all hung out in the living room watching "National Treasure"...
Brad reading and enjoying the sun from a porch up by the canal, above the house and pool...
The pool was a great focal point of the back of the house, reading until I got hot, and then cooling everyone off with a perfectly executed cannonball was a community service that I provided many times during our visit...
We had hot and sunny and beautiful weather...
Ben took this picture from inside the pool with my new camera...
Sarah reading by the pool...
All of us went into town on Sarah's birthday, and stopped for drinks at the Hogsbreath Saloon...
We went to Mallory Square for the Sunset, and Ben took part in one of the shows, involving rescue-cats...he loved it!
We played lots of cards during the week...
Ben's diving rings in the bottom of the pool...he really spent a ton of time in the pool during our stay, and got a lot more confident swimming...
A view across the pool and into the covered patio and living room...
The living room from the kitchen...
Varied and beautiful plantings and paths ran throughout the grounds...
There were 2 kayaks that allowed us to paddle up and down the canal, which in turn led into nearby mangrove swamps, which made for some great paddle trips...
We went to visit the Key West Aquarium, and the tour-guide let Ben hold a baby alligator...he was pretty psyched...
The Aquarium is phenomenal, with a great touching tank...
The tour-guide, Patti, really knew her stuff, and showed off all of her charges to best effect, like this huge conch climbing out of her shell...
There was a big tank outside with sharks that we got to watch feeding...
Ben loved seeing all of the beasts, and actually went to the aquarium 3 times during our stay...
Cooling off in the pool after a hot day of wandering Key West...
D and I went on a paddletrip with Ben...
It was great fun and really nice to be able to paddle right from our house...
They were great sit-on-top kayaks, which allowed us to explore the mangroves, seeing lots of birds and beasts and fish...
I have a soft spot for Pelicans...
D took us on an adventure through some narrow passages in the magroves...
Along with the great birds and fish that we saw, we saw lots of great iguanas perched on the mangroves...
While the younger ones were all green, the older iguanas get wild flares of orange all over their bodies...
Some of the bigger iguanas were 6 feet from nose to tail...
Ben loved exploring the mangroves on D's kayak...
By the end of the trip, he was tired from the level of attention that he paid during the paddle...
We got home in time for a great supper and swim...
Ben asked to be woken up for the New Year, but he was really tired...
We went out again for another paddle the next day, just Gail and I, and saw a ton of birds...
We also came across lots of mellow, maybe hungover, iguanas...
We found this small heron fishing in amongst the mangroves...
Gail and I spent about 2 hours exploring the mangroves, looking at/for wildlife and enjoying the mangroves and salt air and New Year...
I fund this tiny, 2" across, horseshoe crab shell...they shed their entire shell numerous times as they grow...
This iguana leapt off of a mangrove right in front of my kayak, swam across to a tiny mangrove island, and climbed up right in front of us...
He kept climbing higher into the mangrove, which unfortunately wouldn't support his weight, which resulted in his continual slow-motion falling and climbing...
He finally got to the top and looked supremely proud of his accomplishment...moments before the branch he was on bent slowly towards the water...
We passed this bruiser on the way back to the house...
It was a great paddle, a great vacation, and a great way to end one year and begin another...with family and away (even if only temporarily) from the cold and snow that makes up our daily life in the Adirondacks...
1 comment:
That sure seemed like an awesome paddle. I enjoyed the other pics too.
George
Post a Comment