Well, yesterday we had one of the most amazing and memorable experiences of our family’s life together. We went sea kayaking! With dolphins!
The five of us had a private guided kayak trip through the ocean inlet between Fripp and Harbor Islands. It was absolutely spectacularly unbelievably awesome. Meera sat tandem in Braydon’s kayak, and the rest of us went solo. Our guide, Eric, was an incredible wealth of knowledge. He brought us out to a spot where he knows a pod of Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins live (he’s been observing them there for the past ten years). We paddled along, into the inlet, and the conditions were perfect — it was low tide, the water was completely still, and — stunningly — sure enough, we had the gift of seeing so many dolphins. It seemed the whole pod was feeding there right as we arrived. Eric told us to stop paddling and just float there.
It was truly one of the most incredible experiences of my life. To be so low in the water, with total silence all around us, just us and this pod of dolphins. We could hear them blowing water as they’d break the surface. They were swimming and jumping all around us. So many of them. In the kayaks we were literally right there with them… they were as close as 10 feet away from us, swimming under us and all around us and popping up about the surface so that we could see their entire bodies — from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tails. It was unbelievably spectacular.
It was impossible to get photos of the dolphins because you’d never know exactly when, or where, they’d appear from second-to-second. The first photo below is the only shot I got that even shows a dolphin (right to the right of Kyle’s kayak).
We were on the water for 2.5 hours, exploring all around the inlet and salt marshes, and seeing so many spectacular sights. It was truly an awesome experience for the five of us.
If anyone is ever in this area looking for a unique and amazing adventure, get in touch with Eric at The Kayak Farm! Click here for link.
Tonight we had our very special, annual, “Summer Haiti Dinner” of steak frites.
This was our 2nd year doing it at the beach house. It was our 6th year of these dinners! — we started this tradition in 2009, when K & O were five years old.
This night is such a special ritual in our year for us.
The bambinos have fallen head over heels for net casting! It is so much fun because:
- no big hooks!
- no bait!
- they don’t need any help with it! [they’ve mastered it and can do it entirely on their own]
- it is catch and release, so it makes it, in K & O’s own words/minds “True Sport Fishing”
- they catch all sorts of stuff! [they’ve caught more net casting than they have rod fishing]
Today was Grandpa Robert’s 75th birthday! He and Miss Carol drove from Atlanta, and we drove from Harbor Island, and we all met for a day together in Charleston. It was a happy birthday, a great visit, and especially nice for us to get to see Carol! We don’t see her as much as we wish, so it was a real treat to have her all to ourselves for a whole day!
The bulk of our day-trip was spent at Patriots Point, on board the USS Yorktown. The J-Ms had never been on an aircraft carrier before, and given K & O’s love of airplanes (and Meera’s never-ending willingness to roll along with us for just about anything-and-everything), this was a pretty exciting adventure. Grandpa Robert is practically an expert regarding this type of stuff, so I felt like we had the added bonus of our own private tour guide. It was a very cool experience.
Meera was much more into it than I had anticipated her being!
She especially loved the Navy Flight Simulator. This is a 5-minute “ride” (sort of thing) depicting what it looks and feels like to pilot an actual military aircraft. At first K & O did it alone, but M insisted that she wanted to do it too. Kyle was happy to ride it again (Owen was happy to sit this one out), so Kyle and Meera went in it together. Here they are on their way in (excited)…
And here they are on their way out (elated)…
There was so much to see and do there.
Afterwards we made our way into downtown Charleston for a “linner” (late lunch / early dinner) at our favorite bbq joint (Sticky Fingers, of course).
We ended our day meandering Charleston’s historic district, getting another couple pounds of pralines for Owen (!!!!), and winding down our day, before we said goodbye. It was a good day!
HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY GRANDPA ROBERT!
“Happening now: the bambinos are trying frog’s legs for the first time!”
Braydon has been working regular work hours (which means many hours) while we’re in South Carolina. I’ve been working minimal work hours (which means very few, especially relative to my typical crazed work life). For the past two days, though, I’ve been full time with the bambinos as Braydon has been away on a work trip. Here are some snapshots from my phone camera so that Papi can get a glimpse of what we’ve been up to while he’s been gone.
P.S. The photo above was Thursday morning. We went for breakfast at a new-for-us place that was awesome (and that Braydon would love). If you’re ever in this area, I can highly recommend Lowcountry Produce, Beaufort Market & Cafe for a real, good, fresh, from scratch, old fashioned, home cooking, Southern breakfast! (Meera seriously thought she’d died and gone to heaven when I suggested to her that she get the “fresh made, glazed yeast donuts” and a glass of milk for breakfast.)
Oh yes! Watermelon margaritas!!!
These are so good. They are some sweet slushy goodness I tell ya! The perfect summer party drink. Even though we are, very deliberately, all alone here in South Carolina for the month of July, that has not stopped us from having a few little parties of our own folks! Trust me: 5 people — as long as they are the right people — are plenty of people to make a party! We’ve been whipping up these frozen watermelon margaritas like nobody’s business. Add some nibbles, and some music, and — as Meera is fond of saying — “voila!” — party central!
Ok, these are so easy. And I have a few ideas for you with this one.
But, to begin, here is the recipe:
Frozen Watermelon Margaritas
- Cut up some watermelon into chunks. Make sure the watermelon is seedless, or be sure to take out the seeds before freezing. Place in zip-lock bags. Layer these as close to single-layers (of the watermelon chunks) as possible. If you are making a lot, you’ll have to use a whole bunch of zip lock bags.
- Place the watermelon chunks in freezer. The idea is to not have them squish together and freeze into one solid block. You want the watermelon chunks to freeze independently of each other so that they will still be separable chunks once frozen. You can freeze this just a few hours before using, or you can — as we do — leave these in the freezer for as long as you want, so that they are ready to use whenever you want a watermelon marg!
- The ingredients are as follows — 2 1/2 cups frozen watermelon chunks; 3 T fresh lime juice; 4 oz tequila; 2 oz cointreau; 1 1/2 cup ice. Note: You can substitute the ice for more watermelon chunks if you’d like. Play around with it and see what you think… you might like it really watermelony (is that a word?), or a little less watermelony. Braydon and I aren’t big sweet-drink people, and watermelon can be very sweet, so we prefer to add some ice to keep the sweetness down a bit. But if we were making these for some of our sweet-tooth friends, we’d probably use all watermelon and no ice. This will make 2-3 nice sized drinks.
- Blend together in a blender. We are sorta pathetic in that we actually bring our Vitamix with us when we travel (I know, I know, we are nutty that way). But we’ve done these in a basic, cheap blender too (before we got our beloved Vitamix), and that is just fine. It might need a little help pureeing if the watermelon is really solid. But it should come together nicely and blend up slushy.
- Place in glasses of any kind. Margarita glasses are nice, but totally unnecessary. We’ve put these in any and all cups and glasses, and trust me: it doesn’t change the deliciousness of these drinks!
Ok, here are some ideas!!!
- A Cheap Party Drink ~ I keep thinking about how much I wish we had known about this recipe when Braydon and I were in grad school. So, to all our current PhD student blog readers, and other graduate-student-readers (there are lots of you, I know)…. here’s the thing: Ok, these can be CHEAP to make! Right now, at this point in our lives, Braydon and I can afford to splurge on some seriously nice tequila. But it wasn’t too long ago that we were barely scraping by to pay our rent, and we definitely wouldn’t have been buying any fancy tequila. Going out for nice margaritas was not something we could do often (or ever), but we loved to host parties. Here’s the thing: you can make this drink on the super-cheap! Buy a big jug of cheap tequila, some cheap orange liquor (or anything to substitute for the cointreau — you could even just use orange juice), buy some whole watermelons (as far as fruit goes, in summer, this is about as cheap as you can get), and host a Frozen Watermelon Margarita Party this summer. You can make this by the pitcher! And you can serve it with some cheap tortilla chips and salsa! And — wammo! — there you have it! An awesome summer party! I promise: your grad school friends (and all your friends) will love you for it!
- High Brow ~ Serve these margaritas with fresh, homemade guacamole and some nice tortilla chips. I posted from the beach house last summer about our guacamole de molcajete (post is here). We’ve made this guac this summer too, and it is consistently a big hit with our party of five. And so healthy too! (Seriously, if you eat this with fresh tortillas, instead of chips — which the bambinos love to do — it is just yummy healthy goodness!) Photo below is Meera making guac last week. Yummo!
- Low Brow ~ Serve these margaritas with pasteurized, processed (“homemade” and “from scratch”) queso dip. Ok, folks, I don’t allow this very often because it is — truly — probably 100% deadly. But, on occasion, this is a real treat for the J-Ms: good, old fashioned, world-famous, Velveeta Rotel queso dip (post is here). As they say, “it is famous for a reason”… it is just that good! Photo below is the best I could do, a few days ago, out on the back porch, in the semi-dark, with music blaring and my boys devouring this stuff so fast that it is hard to snap a picture quick enough. And… ratcheting it up even further on the “probably deadly” spectrum… have you ever tried Ree Drummond’s “Chile Con Queso, Revved Up” (her recipe is here)? I only make that once every 2-3 years or so (it is just that sinful), but really: that stuff is soooo sinfully good!). Yummo!
- Kid Friendly ~ You can make these margaritas alcohol free! Just substitute orange juice for the tequila and cointreau. Delicious and nutritious! We’ve done this many times by blending up the kids’ version, serving it up, then blending up the grown-ups’ version. Kids love “grown up drinks” (or, at least, mine do). They especially love them if served in a fancy glass, with a garnish or two, a cocktail umbrella, and a straw. You want them to eat more fruit?! Well, there you have it! “Drink your fruit kids!!” They can drink theirs, and you can drink yours! Awesomeness!
I know, I know, I mean, really, seriously: who takes this many photos of their dog at the beach?! It is ridiculous, I’ll admit it. But I have to admit: I love this dang dog! And wouldn’t you know it?! As it turns out, this dang dog loves the beach just as much as we do!
I wouldn’t have done this post, except, well, then there was a request for it, from a longtime and very loyal blog reader — a request for a blog post about “how Dash is experiencing his first summer as the official J-M dog in the Lowcountry.” And that was all it took to pump me up to do this post. So… here it is folks — a post for Dog Lovers (or just Dash lovers), and probably just for them only. The rest of you will think I’ve truly lost my marbles!
So, yeah, Dash seems to be loving his time in South Carolina, at the beach house, and at the beach. We had traveled a bit with him, so he’s pretty accustomed to new places, and we were confident he’d be fine with our July in the Lowcountry (and luckily, the beach house we rent allows dogs!). But we also know that he is really (I mean really) missing the students, and his hyper-social life, at home on campus. For the first couple of weeks after the students had moved out, he was notably and remarkably depressed (truly: lethargic, and just weird and edgy). He has somewhat adjusted, but I know (I mean really know) that he will be very glad to get his usual-life-on-campus back at the end of August. In the meantime, I can say without a doubt, that this dog is loving life!
He loves the golf cart. He jumps right on and sits on the front seat, ready to roll, like a boss! This guy just cracks me up!
He knows that getting on the golf cart means a trip to the beach! And man! Does Dash ever love the beach! He walks the boardwalk ready for the adventures that await~
Wide open spaces! Sand! Salt! Water! And all sorts of things to explore! This dog has it good!!!
Very few people — let alone dogs — will ever be able to experience a vast, wide open, unpopulated beach like this in their entire lifetimes. That fact is not lost on me. I love it, and appreciate every single second of it. And, truthfully, I think Dash does too. No joke. He is a classic J-M, living life to the fullest and not taking any of it for granted.
Sometimes there is literally nobody on the beach but us. I’ve figured out that the prime time for taking Dash to the beach is around 8am. The truth is that Harbor Island beach is always relatively unpopulated, but there is a window of opportunity right around 8am when often there will literally be nobody else but us there. 8am is after the serious exercisers have left the scene (the walkers, joggers, and runners are out there around 6am), but it is before the beach-goers and sun-bathers and families hit the sand (sometime around 10am). So, I like to take Dash to the beach — just me and him — around 8am. If I do that, and if I walk way, way out (away from all the sea turtle nests and dune critters), I can safely let him off the leash. And he will just run and run in leaps and bounds.
At Harbor Island and at Hunting Island, dogs are allowed on the beaches. So we’ve been taking Dash to the beach quite a bit. Before this trip we had never seen Dash swim, or even attempt to swim. But apparently the warm water lured him in, because — it turns out — he’s quite a swimmer! And he loves to play in the water with the bambinos.
But Dash’s favorite thing to do in South Carolina is to explore all the “entities of the coastal environment” (I got that phrase from the title cover of our nature guide — the book that we use to figure out what all this stuff is!)! Like him, we’re exploring too. But there is something about seeing Dash try to, for example — make friends with a ghost crab (photo below!) — that is really just such a hoot!
Here is Dash checking out a horseshoe crab~
And the birds… he loves the birds. There are all sorts of birds that nest on Harbor Island. People come here just for bird watching. Dash would probably come here just for bird watching. He could sit there for hours and just watch the egrets and herons and osprey. When we get out to this area I always make sure he’s on the leash because he can’t be chasing these birds. So, he’s learned to just sit there (or, most often, lay down) and spend some time enjoying the birdwatching. It is quite a riot!
But his favorite thing, by far, are the hermit crabs. He has figured out there there is something living in those shells. But the hermit crabs are totally safe and protected from him in there. So it is quite the funny — always losing — game for Dash. He likes to carry the hermit crabs around for awhile, enjoying the “catch” — but then he always drops them and lets them loose (he’s no match for them anyway). He seems confused as to why they don’t come out to play. It is funny to watch.
And the beach house. Remember, the beach house is at least 3 — maybe 4 — times the size of our house back at home. Dash is used to living in a tiny — I mean, tiny — apartment. So, the beach house is like a mansion to him (and to us). There is so much room to spread out and relax. And… winning!!!… there is a big ‘ole railed-in deck — just perfect for Dash to be able to be outside without anyone worrying he’ll take off. Dash really enjoys chillaxing at the beach house. And just like the rest of us, he’s dog-tired and sleeping some nice long nights during these dog days of summer.
Here are a few more cuties of our cutie dog. If you’ve made it this far in the post then you are either a Dog Lover or a Dash lover, and so— thank you for indulging me! Thank you for reading! ~love, Heather & Dash
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