Experiment, Golf, Laughter, Snake named Whiskey

This morning started out slow. The girls weren't motivated. They wanted to play putt putt golf, next door to the hotel, but since it is Sunday morning, we had to wait a while for it to open. They kept peaking out the hotel door looking for it to be open. They wanted to play golf before going to the pool/ocean so we spent the morning in hotel room. I fired up the laptop and checked email while they hung out on the balcony. Colleen's parents sent snacks with us on our trip and one of the snacks was a container of trail mix. Because none of us like raisins, and the peanuts weren't a huge hit either, they decided to do a little experiment. They lined up, alternating, peanuts and raisins on the balcony rail. They wondered if the pidgeons we'd seen earlier would eat it.

Shortly after 11 a.m. we went next door to play putt putt golf. Colleen was horrible in the first round and Kyra beat me by one point (Kyra=48, Sam=49, Colleen-74). But I guess Colleen just needed a warm-up round. On the second set of 18 holes, Collen almost won (Sam=55, Colleen=56, Kyra=60). We had fun and didn't take it too seriously. I'm glad I chose the 36 hole option because it went by so quickly! Plus, if we had stopped at 18, Colleen probably wouldn't have been as happy afterwards as she was after the last round. When we finished, the girls added up the score as we walked across the street to CiCi's pizza buffet for a cheap lunch. As we walked there through a strip-mall, we saw a pet store that had a bird in the window. The girls wanted to go in, but the lights were out and it looked closed. We also walked past The Pottery Bar. The girls wanted to paint pottery, but I wanted some beach time, so I told them we'd go there tomorrow.

We then returned to the hotel, and the first thing the girls did was check the balcony railing for their little experiment. They yelled excitedly for me to come see. It looks like pidgeons like peanuts, but not raisins! Most of the peanuts were missing, but the raisins were still there. How funny!

We changed into bathing suits and headed to the ocean. A storm was forming. Colleen and I went out into the ocean on our inner tubes while Kyra stayed on the shore, afraid of the storm. Eventually, we returned to the beach and I convinced Kyra that it was safe to be in the ocean. The air temperature was cool and we were shivering out of the water so we all returned to the ocean. But after a while, I was shivering too much and suggest we all go to the hot tub.

After spending about 15 minutes in the hot tub, the girls were overheated and wanted to go to the pool. I wrapped up in a towel and sat in a chair and read while they swam. There was a small band playing on the pool deck. At one point, one of about 8 college-aged-guys appeared on his balcony on the 6th floor and began dancing (we'd seen him and his group at the pool/hot-tub yesterday and today). He was hilarious!!! He drew a lot of attention and before long, everyone on the pool deck was looking up watching him dance and cheering him on. (The poor band hadn't gotten much applause, until now.) The people on their balconies above and below him couldn't figure out why everyone was staring up towards them but then the real band thanked the dancers on the 6th floor and the guests above and below them figured it out. During one song, he held up a finger as if saying "wait a minute", ran inside the room and returned with a guitar. Then his buddy came out and danced as the main character pretended to be the rock star. We laughed so hard at him and his occassional buddy dancing! I took this video clip with my camera as we laughed with the crowd at them. But as the music mellowed, so did the dancing. It was hilarious while it lasted. The dancers got more attention than band. Woot!

Once the dancing stopped, we went to our room and showered and then went to dinner at the Mexican restaurant across the street. It was yummy!!! The girls wanted to go to the exotic pet store to see if it was open. The birds drew us in, and the girls had fun talking to them. I thought the salt water fish and coral were cool, and daydreamed about starting a salt water aquarium. Kyra and Colleen loved the 7-week old guinee pigs and the store owners let them take the guinee pigs out of the cage and hold them. The store only recently opened and the owners appologized for the mess, since they are still setting up, but it didn't bother us. They were very friendly and answered all our questions. The birds weren't for sale, but they could get similar younger birds if someone wanted one. The owners were appreciative of the girls handling the guinea pigs since they guinea pigs hadn't let them handle them yet. Guess they just didn't have as strong of a desire to hold them as Kyra and Colleen did. The girls had a blast talking to the birds and hearing them chatter back. The store also had boa constrictors. I took picture of a snake with Colleen's cell phone and sent it to Colleen's mom saying this is what Colleen bought with the money she sent with her for vactaion. We spent the next few hours texting her mom talking about Colleen's newest pet snake named "Whiskey". (Next to the pet store was a liquor store with painted signs in the window for "gin", "whiskey", etc. As we were concoting this scheme, we were walking past this store and decided to name the snake "Whiskey" since this was the first word that popped into our vision.) We decided that tomorrow we'll completely deny any knowledge of a snake in attempt to drive Colleen's mom crazy... Fun times!

And lastly, another beautiful sunset while on vacation!