Lobster Boy

Have you ever seen this guy?

This is Lobster Boy, or if you're being politically correct I guess you could call him by his real name which is Grady Stiles. There was a time when I was so interested in this guy, I would watch any special about him that was on TV, read any book about him that I could get my hands on and listen to anyone who had something to say about him. I'm sure you're wondering why and I don't have an answer for you. Just some weird faze I went through I guess.

Anyway, this post is NOT about that lobster boy. This post is about these lobster boys:

In a couple of weeks, it will be the beginning of lobster season and for two days before lobster season opens up to the commercial companies they have mini lobster season so that people like us can go catch some for ourselves. We decided we would head down to the keys with Mel and Landon to join in the hunt.

Correction: The boys would join in the hunt while us girls and the kids did a lot of this:

And this:

This was the biggest hawaiin ice I've ever had. Yummy... as you can see Owen couldn't get enough. He wouldn't even take a second away from trying to eat it to smile for the camera.

And this:

Oh wait...  that's not a picture of us, it's a picture of a person we saw while we were sitting on the beach people watching. Is he wearing shorts? Who knows... we couldn't tell from this view.

Anyway, we got to the Keys and dropped the boys off at their camping spot:

And we drove to our camping spot:

We decided since it's like 100 degrees outside that it would be better for the kids and the moms if we slept in a nice air conditioned room while our men went and hunted our food for us.

They were naturals! The first day they caught tons of them, unfortunaately, only one was big enough to keep. The second day however, they had better luck and caught all of these:

After they were done lobster fishing the second morning, we decided to meet up with them and play at the beach for a while. Me, Mel, Eli, Tyler and Owen did this:

Don't they make a cute couple? So funny, I went to get the camera and I look back and Tyler was playing with Eli and they seriously looked like this cute little family under the umbrella out on the sandbar.

Oh and Owen did a LOT of this:

Seriously, what is it with my child and ramps or stairs? Is it like this for every child? He can not go anywhere with either of these things without wanting to climb them. He had a whole ocean in front of him and this was his favorite activity.

While we were playing in the ocean and on the stairs, Landon did this:

And came back with this:

Owen loved it:

Or maybe not... I couldn't tell.

So cute. Maybe next year when we go we'll strap a lifejacket on Owen and put him on the front of the paddle board. That way he can tag along to catch some of the little guys.

Tonight we reaped the rewards of our husband hard work and thouroughly enjoyed every minute of it:

Before the gorging ensued:

The during:

Mmmmm... yummy.

And the aftermath:

We dominated that lobster.

You, yes, I'm talking to the five of you that actually read my blog... you should think about coming with us next year. You'd love it, I promise.

Side note: I got a new phone last week and I added this truth or dare app. It's hilarious. Tyler and I played it pretty much the whole way there and the whole way home. It has the funniest dares on there. This is Tyler doing the Robot:

And me acting out a scene where I get poisoned and die a slow death:

Owen was so entertained while we played. Especially when Tyler had to sing "I'm a Little Teapot" while doing the actions and I had to sing a Britney Spears song. I promise if you ever come visit us, we'll be playing.

Super Cut... maybe not.

Have you ever had a bad haircut? I have... quite a few actually. Like this one:

Those aren't the actual scissors my hair was cut with. This is from  scrapbooking page my mom did for me years ago. Thanks Mom!





I was in seventh grade and my friend Emily came to school with a new hairstyle. I decided to copy the cut because on Emily, it worked, on me, as you can see, it did not. At all. I think it has something to do with my razor sharp chin.
My brother made up a song about this hair cut called "Brittany got ran over by a lawn mower" to the tune "Grandma got ran over by a raindeer" and taught it to everyone in our middle school. Ok, maybe not everyone but when you're 13 and ugly, it feels like everyone knows the song (Not to worry Trav, I've long since forgiven you).

When I was 25, I thought maybe I wasn't remembering what I looked like with short hair accurately, like maybe since it had been 12 years before, I had grown into a face that could pull off short hair. I was wrong. It was a bad idea... a really bad idea. It ended up looking like this:

Why so fluffy? The extra 20 pounds couldn't have helped the look either.







Well luckily after those two traumatic hair experiences, I've comes to terms with the fact that I'm made for long hair. It's just the best idea for me. I know now that drastic in hair terms for me means a few blonde highlights.

Anyway, since our little guy is so handsome, he looks great with any hair cut but in his short little 15 month lifetime he has had a couple of unfortunate hairstyles (thanks to mommy and daddy). Like this one:

For some reason I felt that since those long hairs were his newborn hairs, I should keep them attached. I just couldn't bare the thought of cutting off the one connection he still had to the womb. Bad idea... poor little kid ended up looking like he was trying to pull off a comb-over (still, I think if anybody could pull off a comb over, it would be him... cute little guy).

Last week we had been letting his hair grow and grow and since Tyler was going to get his hairs cut, we decided to take Owen along for a little trim. I love the shaggy surfer style he has going but wanted to trim up the ends a tad. So, we headed over to Super Cuts (Tyler was leaving the next day so we needed something quick and easy) and immediately got an appointment with Doug.

Tyler went first and Doug did a great job giving him the cut he asked for. I was pretty confident putting Owen in the chair, especially when Doug pulled out a little apron with animals on it (this guy must know what he's doing with kids since he's got an animal apron for them to wear). I was dead wrong. I asked him to take just a little off the ends, which he did in some places. Like this for example... just took the scissors straight across:

Really Doug? I know the kid is squirmy, so shouldn't it be easy for you to make it just a little less straight across?
In other areas, he didn't take anything off:

Just a random big chunk to the left and a sweet little rat tail left in the middle. I hate rat tails... even when they were a little bit in style (but really were they ever in style?). I hated them so much that when my younger brother had one, I offered to cut his hair for him and promised to leave the rat tail intact but because he had no control over what I was doing, I shaved it off. I just knew he would thank me for it later.

So, even though Owen is a baby and it's not a full on rat tail right now, I'm still not super happy knowing that eventually it could grow into something looking like this:

Like I said before, our little guy is so handsome that he can pull off any style (we think so anyway). I still think that Tyler and I might attempt to take a little more off the back  and next time Owen needs a trim, we'll rethink the place we go. Even if they do have an animal apron for him to wear.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider... or not.

As I have mentioned previously Owen loves to find the "Yucks" that enter our house. He loves spotting the little creepers and has become fond of touching them in recent days as well.

I have never been bothered by bugs or spiders. If there was ever one around and I wanted it gone, I would simply pick it up and throw it away and to all of the spiders, bugs, snakes, etc. that live in the yard, I would think "Oh, good for them for finding a happy little home back there" until a couple of days ago. Tyler and Owen came in to let me know that we had some pretty yucky "yucks" in our backyard. Three HUGE yucky yucks making three HUGE cobwebs.  I walked out the back door to see what they were talking about, turned to my right and saw this:

And this:

These are two of the three. We couldn't get a great picture of the third one. Aren't they so creepy? Like they sort of look like they have skeleton faces on them. I wish so bad my camera would have gotten a great picture of the cobwebs and the other spider making a web next to these two. All of the sudden I'm not such a big fan of spiders making a happy little home back there. Blah...

I don't want you to leave this blog with those horrible images so maybe look at this for a minute or two to clear your mind of all icky-ness...

Sometimes...

Sometimes when you have this handsome little boy running around your house:

You lose your keys for a whole day.
You search everywhere, you even have friends come over and help you search.
Then at the end of the day, you are playing with that little boy and you are trying to get a toy to work.
When the toy doesn't work, you look inside and find two things:

1. That something is blocking the air from blowing the balls out of the toy
2. That the something that is blocking the balls is your keys that you've been searching for all day

I love that handsome little guy. Seriously.... is it weird that him hiding my keys in a toy makes me love him even more?

Key West Baby!

A couple weeks back Tyler was heading down to Key West and he asked if Owen and I wanted to come along. Of course we jumped right on that offer, packed up our bags and headed down to the Southern most tip of the US. It's only about a 3 1/2 hour drive and it's absolutely beautiful so it seems even shorter, plus Owen slept for 2 of the hours so it was super pleasant (those of you who haven't ever ridden in the car with Owen don't know how much he despises the car, but he really really does, something about being strapped in I guess). Since Tyler was working all day, Owen and I found some fun things for moms and babies to do in Key West. When we were on our cruise a couple months ago, the PL on the ship gave us free tickets to a butterfly conservatory. I didn't know how hyped I was on the idea of going but thought Owen might love to see butterflies. We walked in and he was in heaven. There was a teenage kid in front of us that had put some banana on his finger so that the butterflies would land on his hand. This is him: (is it weird to have a picture of a random teenager on our blog? Maybe...)

Once he had them, he would bring them over to show Owen. (Thanks Random Teenage Kid!) It was super cute. Owen loved this one on my hat. He couldn't get enough of it.

So I  had heard about the Sunset Celebration in Key West but hadn't heard the extent of what goes on there. We headed down with Tyler once he was off work and it was so fun. Mostly because of the crazy street performers (The Cat Man) but also because of the gorgeous sunset. So I had to put a video of the cat man on here. Sorry about this video, just stop watching it toward the end because I'm super zoomed in and you don't want to hear us jabbering or see any of us as up close as we are. But you have to see how strange this guy is. Seriously... this guy was hilarious (I don't think on purpose).




This guy was pretty impressive.

My super handsome boys.

Me and little guy.

Oh, I love this face... really really love this face.

The next morning we headed over to the aquarium. Owen was super impressed and even pet his first shark:

Don't worry, it's a nurse shark, which I swear someone once told me that they don't even have teeth but thanks to our very knowledgeable aquarium tour guide I found out that nurse sharks actually have 300 teeth. Who knew? 

Cute huh? He loved this big turtle.

 

I was trying to get a picture of the giant shark with it's mouth open behind me. Not easy to do when you're taking the picture yourself.

We also hung out at the beach, the pool and some way yummy restaurants (mmmmm... Hogfish Bar and Grill, check it out if you ever find yourself in the keys).

Oh and we had to get a picture at the Southernmost Tip of the Continental US because why not?

You should probably make a trip down to the Keys. It's worth it. Oh and if you ever do find yourself in the Florida Keys, please call us, we'll meet you there.

Flugtag

Isn't that the funniest word? I couldn't stop saying it all day "Flugtag". For those of you that don't speak German, it means "Flying Day" (thanks Wikipedia!). A few weeks ago, Tyler saw a commercial for the "Red Bull Flugtag". If you're curious about what it is, you can see it here. Anyway, it looked hilarious to us so we decided we were going to head down to Miami for the day to check it out. We got there about a half an hour into it and it was packed. They said there was something like 70,000 people there. Crazy. But we were super excited to be there with the other 69,997 people attending the event.

Ok, so Owen doesn't look super happy but he was loving the music and hamming it up for all of the people trying to talk to him. So yes, we were excited to be there. Since it was so so packed we had to work our way through the crowds to try and get close enough that we could actually see what was going on. This is the first one we saw:

Isn't this so funny? That guy is trying to fly with a big umbrella on a giant pair of jean shorts. So so funny. Right before the flights, they would do these skits and dances. There was a Robin Hood and his Merry Men trying to fly the sherwood forest. And a baker trying to fly a pizza pie. So funny to me. I was so sad I didn't get any good pictures or videos of the skits. Bummer. You might also notice all of the boats in the background. I couldn't believe how many people were there in their boats. We need one.

So because we were standing in the heat with 70,000 people, after about an hour we felt like this:

Tyler was supposed to be acting sun-pissed in this picture but he didn't hear me when I told him so he looks happy. We were seriously so so hot though. We were sweating so bad. We were pretty gross. Poor Owen was so hot that we were just dumping water down his back and over his head. He loved it. We decided to go sit in the shade and Owen's found his favorite part of the event:

He could have spent all afternoon walking up and down this step. I guess little kids just don't care as much about people trying to fly things as they do about steps and leaves. Who knew?

Here are a few more pics from the event just in case you wanted to see some more:

So after we left Flugtag, we headed down to South Beach to meet our friends Landon and Mel. BTW... I have to brag about Landon for a sec. He rode his bike from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami on a beach cruiser today. 35 miles on a beach cruiser? I mean really... pretty cool. We had some way yummy lunch with them and then Owen did this:

By far the best part of Owen's day.

We ended the night by saying goodbye to one of the first friends I made in Ft. Lauderdale. Her name is Camber and I met her the first week we were here. She was so welcoming and starting inviting me to things right away. She helped me feel like Ft. Lauderdale was home. She and her husband also taught us how to make our own sushi... yummy!!!  Oh and she has the cutest kids, really. I serously love them and I am going to miss them so so much. Especially her little lady telling me she wants to make cookies and see Owen at my house. We're so sad... they are leaving us to go to Mississippi for the next year.

Bye Camber and Jerry! We're going to miss you so much!

P.S. I know that you probably think I wear that hat every day. I promise I don't. Just on the days I don't feel like doing my hair (more like every other day).