Coral Cove at Jupiter Beach

After we checked out of the hotel yesterday, we ate lunch and then headed back to the area around the lighthouse that we discovered the night before.  From the lighthouse, we drove across a bridge and along an stretch of oceanfront, and the kids spotted this playground and were eager to come back and try it out.

The playground was located at the entrance to Coral Cove, one of the coolest beaches we've ever seen in Florida!  We had taken a quick peak from the boardwalk the night before and were excited about returning the next day.  After the kids played for awhile we changed them into swimsuits so we could hit the beach.  Carigan decided to walk the wooden perimeter of the playground like a balance beam and she was cracking me up with her intense focus.  This is what happens when you leave Daddy in charge of sunscreen:

The beach reminded me of some of the beaches I've been to in Hawaii and Australia with its rocks and very cool reef.  There were lots of people snorkeling - Michael was kicking himself for not bringing his gear!  Coral Cove is located down a very steep embankment.  It was a little tricky getting all five of us down there!  Michael took a couple of pictures through his sunglasses because the polarized lens revealed much of the reef below the water.  Wesley was the bravest.  Honestly, Coral Cove is not the best beach for children, but it was breathtakingly beautiful!  With all the rocks and the crashing waves, it was hard to do much in the water without any sort of gear.  But we really enjoyed seeing such a unique beach so close to home.  We'd love to come back with gear when the kids are older!

The seashells were absolutely amazing!  The biggest and best ones we've ever found in one spot.  We kept finding perfect spiral shell after shell.  The waves were a little too intense for Carigan's taste... she kept running for cover but you couldn't run far because in just two or three feet you hit that embankment we had to scale down to get down to the water.  She felt a little trapped and kept hopping into my lap and climbing me like a tree.

Keeping a safe distance (safe until the next wave, anyway!).  There was a 0% chance of me getting Carigan to join Wesley & Anna Kate for this picture:

At one point Wesley walked up to me with a small white ball in his hand and said, "Mommy, is this a turtle egg?"  I kind of laughed and said, "No, it's a ping-pong ball."  But then I took if from him and realized it WAS an egg.  Crazy!  I kind of panicked and asked him where he got it.  He pointed up to the wall of sand we had scaled to get down to the Cove.  Sure enough, we had uncovered a sea turtle nest (I used my master computer skills to insert an arrow in the photo below for your viewing convenience).  Michael ran up to the lifeguards and notified them, and they both just kind of shrugged and said that the eggs couldn't have survived in that location anyway.  It just goes to show you how prolific sea turtles are in this area, because at any other beach, they'd call out some team of experts to move or protect the nest.  Where we vacation in St. George you'll stumble upon maybe two or three marked sea turtle nests along any stretch of beach, but I've never seen anything like at Jupiter!  There were so many stakes out around our hotel it looked like a truckload of paint-stirrers had crashed there... literally hundreds and hundreds of marked nests.  Here at Coral Cove I guess they don't even bother.  I'm used to being told that sea turtles are rare and endangered and I was actually afraid we'd get in some sort of trouble for disturbing the nest, but we discovered they're far from endangered around Jupiter!  We did put the egg back with the others and covered them up again, but the lifeguards said the crabs would most likely get to them in such a shallow nest anyway.  Very cool that we got to hold an actual sea turtle egg though!

Wesley loved how the waves crashed up against the rocks!  Carigan, not so much.  That wall of sand we had to scale to get down to the cove is literally like quicksand... you stick your foot in and it disappears and all the sand around it just caves.  It made it very VERY difficult to climb back up to the top.  I made the mistake of wearing my flip flops in my first attempt to climb it.  The sand swallowed up my left shoe and even though I immediately plopped down to mark the spot, the shoe was GONE.  We dug and we dug and we dug and we dug but could not find it.  It was CRAZY.  I finally took the kids back to the playground area where I rinsed them off and changed their clothes.  After about 30 minutes of searching for my shoe, Michael came back up and declared he had given up.  But those flip-flops are super special because I got them in Hawaii back in 2001 and you cannot buy that kind of flip-flop (Locals) anywhere else.  For the past 10 years they've not only been the shoes I wear to the beach, they've been the shoes I wear to Disney World and other amusement parks because they are the only shoes comfortable on my feet all day long in heat.  I told Michael I would go back and look, but he huffed and puffed and marched back down there yelling back something about how he'd just spend the day down there.  But about 20 minutes later, he emerged with a badly sunburned back, but victorious in my shoe recovery!  What a guy!!  My personal flip-flop hero.  :o)

 The sign of a successful vacation! 

Bubba Gump & The Lighthouse

Tuesday night we planned to eat a cool-looking restaurant on the water, but it was an hour wait because they had shut down all their outside seating due to possible lightening.  A one hour wait is a NO-GO with kids, but luckily we stumbled on a brand new Bubba Gump just down the road.  It had just opened a few months before (that's why it wasn't showing on any of our restaurant searches).  We ate at our first Bubba Gump in Charleston over Thanksgiving break, and Wesley was a big fan on the "Run Forrest" and "Stop Forrest" method of waving down your waiter.  He remembered it and was pumped about our new restaurant find.  By the way, I don't know why Carigan is eating a leaf... I just knew it was all that was keeping her in the frame so I let it fly.

You can tell the place was designed for crowds but it was practically empty when we were there.  It took us forever to move the kids past the toys in the outside waiting area (and even longer to get them past the ones in the indoor one!).  My hula-hoop pro:

This is how I eat pretty much every meal out with the kids... with a monkey hanging off me and another kid or two competing for the real estate nearest my lap.  The fact that the kids meals came in boats bumped Bubba Gump up a few more notches in our book.  We had to stop for another 10 minutes to let the kids play on the way out.  Bubba Gump was also on the water, with a close-up view of the Jupiter Lighthouse in their backyard.  Despite the fact this was our 3rd trip to Jupiter Beach and the lighthouse is less than two miles from the resort where we have always stayed, this is the first time we stumbled upon it!  I can't believe how terribly underutilized our past two trips to Jupiter have been...  I'd always headed into town to find restaurants and things to do (and there's not much there but a Walmart and a bunch of chain restaurants).  For some reason it never occurred to me to drive along the coast.  I thought it was just condos.  Can't believe all that we were missing!  Wish the lighthouse in sight from Bubba Gump, we drove toward it until we found the entrance.

The lighthouse and museum were closed for the day, but we could still stop and play on the playground on the property.  I'd love to come back and climb the lighthouse on a future trip, but there is a height requirement for going to the top of the lighthouse and neither of the girls are tall enough right now.  All three kids really got into trying out the monkey bars (but they each insisted that we hold onto their legs in case they dropped).

Love that you can see the lighthouse in the background!  Not surprisingly, the little monkey was the best of my three on the monkey bars:

According to the plaque there, these shipwrecked iron cannons and anchor were uncovered in July of 1987, just 2000 yards east of this spot in 10 feet of water off Jupiter Inlet.  Researchers have identified them as remains of a Spanish vessel traveling from Cuba to Spain that wrecked off the River "Jeaga" (Jupiter Inslet) in December, 1659.  The ship was carrying precious gold and silver cargo.  The 33 surviving sailors lived with the local "Jeaga" Native Americans until rescued by a ship dispatched from St. Augustine.  Pretty nifty.

The girls enjoying their last breakfast out on the balcony before checking out the next morning:

Michael's conference wrapped up around 10 a.m. and we check out a little after 11.  This cracked me up... I directed the girls to the business center to throw away some trash, and when they spotted Daddy in the window helping the bellhop load the car, they made silly faces at them for about five minutes.  Nothing phases Daddy.  ;o)

Return to Jupiter Beach

Michael had a conference last week at the Jupiter Beach Resort & Spa and found himself with a few tag-alongs.  The last time we crashed a conference at this hotel Wesley was getting ready to turn three and I decided the time away from home (i.e. not MY floors!) would be a perfect time to potty train him.  So Jupiter Beach will always bring to mind potty charts & training undies & M&M's in a jar.  Carigan doesn't turn three until late January so I decided to give her a pass on potty-training boot camp this trip.  The kids loved staying at a fancy hotel.  We had a suite with a king bed in our room and a pull-out couch and small kitchen in the kids' room.  They were asking where they were going to sleep so I had to pull out the bed as soon as we arrived to show them.  They were pumped!

We went to dinner at Outback, where Wesley & Anna Kate kept asking what time it was so they could count how many hours until they got to go to bed.  Gotta love hotels when they get my kids excited about bedtime!  It had been pouring rain when we check in and while we ate dinner, but it had stopped by the time we got back to the hotel, so we grabbed the BOB stroller and took a walk on the beach.  The combination of the clouds and the setting sun made for a gorgeous setting, and I was kicking myself the whole way for not bringing my camera!  There are a lot of rocks along Jupiter Beach and the kids loved climbing all over them.  As the waves crashed against the rocks they'd yell, "VOLCANO!!"  
We had two large balconies, one off our room and one off the kids' room.  That's where the girls ate breakfast and lunch every day.  It was like their own personal little tea party space:

By Monday afternoon (July 23) I finally mustered enough energy to venture down to the pool and the beach with all three kids by myself.  The swimming pool lasted about 5 minutes until all three kids were clamoring for the hot tub.  I had to wrestle with Carigan constantly to keep her from immersing herself in the hot tub for more than a minute or so.  It was really only about as hot as a warm bath, but I still kept trying to keep her from going in all the way.  A nice exhausting exercise in futility.

I finally decided the beach had to be easier than wrangling kids around a hot tub, so we walked down the boardwalk and set up in front of the hotel.  I don't remember there being this many rocks at this beach.  Some people from the conference commented that there had been quite a bit of erosion.  It made it difficult to swim, which actually made my job a little easier.  The rocks sort of formed a barrier between the waves and the beach, so I was able to actually sit and relax a bit.  They loved the way the waves crashed up against the rocks! 

The girls building sandcastles.^  -BELOW- This is one of those photos that you think is all picturesque when you take it, but when you download it later it looks like this.  It was too bright for me to see the screen on the camera, and apparently it was too bright for Wesley to make a pleasant face.  But this is where I sat while the kids played, and it was indeed very pleasant.

There had been a HUGE storm the night before (the thunder and lightening shook our hotel room!  Thank goodness for black-out curtains!) and it was overcast until just before we came out, so we pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves.  I took this pic (above) because a pelican was flying really low.  It dive-bombed into the water and came up with something a second later.  The resort had a huge chest of beach toys for the kids.  All played happily until Wesley cut his heel on a rock and acted like his foot was going to fall off.  We headed in to clean it up and so Carigan could take a nap before dinner.

Carigan was still a little sleepy at dinner.  She sneaked her binky and blankey out of my bag and was snuggling with Anna Kate.  -BELOW-  This is how I found Wesley and Anna Kate a few hours after we put them to bed.  The joys of sharing a bed with your sibling!

Tuesday was more of the same.  Sleeping late, having more tea parties on balconies, watching cartoons, coloring pictures, reading books, and then heading to the beach.  This time we waited until Daddy had an opening in his schedule that afternoon so he could go with us. 

Wesley took a long walk with me on the beach while Michael watched the girls.  If you have ever met Wesley you know he NEVER stops talking.  It can really drain you, but I actually find it endearing when I can focus all of my attention on him.  It's just hard when he's competing with his sisters for my attention and doesn't know how to take a breath!  I enjoyed walking hand in hand with my boy giving each and every word my full undivided attention!  Of course as soon as we got back, all the kids were begging to go to the hot tub.  Carigan was fascinated by the noises coming from the filters and other gadgets.  At least it made it easier to keep her from fully submerging herself! 

Arrrrrrgh for Isa & Christian!

Saturday the kids got to join in the annual spectacle of amazement that is Isa & Christian's birthday party!  Last year's cowboy party left us dazzled, so my kids expected nothing short of Disney-level magic at their birthday party this year.  Miss Melissa never disappoints!  This year it was a pirate theme, complete with costumes, props, face-painting and treats for all.

We arrived early to help set up, so Wesley got to break in the jumpy house and slide before anyone else arrived.  And Anna Kate was the first to get her face painted:

The cuteness factor really got out of control when the pirates of honor arrived... Christian waddling around in his pirate gear exclaiming "Arrrrgh!" made my smiling muscles sore. 

Like Wesley, Carigan's face-painting started out simple but grew more elaborate throughout the party as she made multiple stops at the face-painting station.  Brianna (a 16-year-old in the youth group) did the cake... she never ceases to amaze!

Anna Kate & Logan^.  Carigan's fake sad face (below).  She was in a mood to perform.

Carigan fake-snoring, pretending to sleep while Isa opened presents.  Like I said, she was in a mood to perform.  The pink forehead over Isa's shoulder in the photo below belongs to Anna Kate.  :o) 

Happy  Happy Birthday Isa & Christian!!  We are so thrilled that Ann Kate and Isa will be spending A LOT of time together this year in Kindergarten at LCS.  They'd better batten down the hatches!