More Beaches! South Pointe

Okay, so this is our FAVORITE beach.  It's the beach in my post here that was so glorious and beautiful. Unfortunately, due to all the crazy WIND there was seaweed and litter EVERYWHERE and it was so ugly. I felt bad. Also the waves were CRAZY, which, for Jethro was awesome cause he rode them on the tube like a master surfer--but for the little kids it was a little much. I was definitely sad that our favorite gem of Miami was such an eyesore and so much less beautiful than normal. Oh well. It was still a GREAT time!

Oh yeah, a great time until Ruthie got stung by a jelly fish. Which is supposed to be INCREDIBLY painful, even for adults. Poor, poor baby. Sterling carried her off to the lifeguard house and they sprayed it with vinegar, but it still hurt for a good 10-15 minutes before wearing off and her leg was SO swollen it was so sad! 

Luckily, there were no more mishaps. 

Jethro and Hazel were AWESOME they played for hours on those tubes and just soared over those mountainous waves--it was so fun to watch!

Due to the wind and waves there was a lot more playing in the sand that day.

Can't go to the beach without burying SOMEONE in the sand!

Sterling grabbed the camera and the kids to run over to the pier and watch the massive freight boats go past. When he went he had three kids and everyone else wanted to stay with me. So I said "Ok, remember you have three kids!...oh wait! Four! Five! Honey there are SIX kids following you!" haahaa. The cutest thing of all was that Will got SOOOO excited about the tug boat following it. We had gotten a book from the library called Tug just that week and it talked about how he's small and little but does so many big jobs and Will was just ECSTATIC that there was a tug boat! He remembered what it was called and everything-so sweet!

That girl and her licorice. 

I love it when they play so nicely together. They were exploring to find things to put in their 'soup'. 

I loved watching the waves crash on the rocks.

HAHAHA great one, Talmage!

Molly thinks she is in charge of everything, even the helicopters. 

Look mom, a helicopter!

She almost toppled right into that bucket!

One last shot on the pier. 

Those two spoiled Molly rotten. It was not enough to just push her, they pretended to get hit by the swing, fell on the ground dead, the whole bit. Molly thought they were SO hilarious!

Jethro and Sterling went on Black Friday and got the original wii, which was very affordable since there are newer ones now. So we got a used wii and a couple of super cheap games because Sterling has really been wanting to play with me and we think it will be a fun activity for the two of us when he needs a break from studying but doesn't want to do anything requiring effort. Only then we only got 'family' games and all of them require getting up and putting out SOME effort. Haha. Oh well. It should be a ton of fun anyway. The kids LOVE it and Ruthie is surprisingly good at Just Dance.

Some Just Dance fun after the beach:

And a few from Kayli:

Sterling was napping on the sand and Molly came up and gave him the BIGGEST hug and kiss, it was soooo sweet!

Rub-a-dub-a-dub how many cousins in a tub?

The kids were SOOO awesome at playing Just Dance! They were so hilarious to watch! Molly spins and stops herself in this lunge position with this massive proud smile on her face that I just LOVE.

That night Kayli and I went out on the TOWN. Sterling stayed home with ALL the kids while we rode the metro into downtown. I only got turned around trying to park in a parking garage for like ten minutes...haha. And Kayli only got hit on twice by strange and scary looking guys...haha!

We went to Bayside Market and they had all these food trucks there (I don't know why) which was AWESOME! So we wandered around and I told Kayli all the good things we've tried from the Cuban/Peruvian dishes. She chose Egyptian Shwarma and I was thinking--you're crazy?!? But is was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER!!!! It was some stir fry type of stuff inside a pita but the spices and taste of everything was SO DELICIOUS! I have been craving it ever since. Then we walked along the ocean and got to all the little shops and wandered back and forth and realized how boring we are on our lonesomes, haha. But it was really nice to just chat and stroll and NOT think about the nine kids at home and have some fun sister time!

Kayli tried out some gelato at one little shop (cherry!?! Really?!?! You might never live that down, Kayli!) and deemed it not as good as Italy. Then we wandered around even more and they still had the pop-up restaurant there from when Sterling and I went to Bayside several weeks ago! I was so excited to show Kayli because it is such a unique thing and so much fun! Of course they had live music and it was right next to a GIANT lighted Christmas tree, so it felt very festive and fun. We tried to convince a Peruvian chef to let us taste his Paella (SUPER common dish served here) without actually buying it. He did not approve, haha. So we ended up sharing a dish. It's almost like a seafood gumbo, South American style with jumbo shrimp and squid. I loved it, especially when Kayli took one for the team and went back and asked for the limes they forgot to put on our plates. Added just the right amount of perfect. Kayli was not so big of a fan. I agree, it didn't compare with the Egyptian, but it was still super fun to try.

Then we rode home uneventfully and got home ridiculously early for a Friday night out. Haha. I had such a great time though! It was so fun to try out the new things and show her some of downtown Miami and ride around the city in the metro mover. Good times. Huge shout out to Sterling and Jethro for holding up the fort while we went!