June 13, 2009
We were very lucky in that on Saturday morning they had the first release of the season of baby sea turtles on South Padre Island. We got up at 5:30 to call the informational number to find out if they had hatched the night before. When we found out that they had, we headed over to South Padre to see them being released at 7:00 am. There was some condensation on the lens in this picture, but thought I'd post it anyway.
Got there a little early, so Colin and I walked on the beach looking for shells.
The turtle rescue volunteers roped off an area on the beach so that the turtles could be safely released.
There were 3 nests that hatched. Over the just over 300 eggs, 287 of the baby turtles hatched. They were brought down to the beach in coolers.
The volunteers were great about carrying some of the turtles around to everyone so that we all got an up close look at them. They were even smaller than I had imagined, and very cute! We weren't allowed to touch but got really close to them.
Then they released them all, and they headed down towards the water.
These little guys were the fastest of the bunch. Here is the first one heading into the water. They walked down really close, and then it was like they stopped and just waited for a wave to come pick them up.
They would get carried into the water, and you could see them start to paddle. They were so cute!
Colin was with me, and then Ciara was in a spot a little bit away with Boo Boo. She was a little tired because it was early and a little shy because of the crowd.
There were a few stragglers in the group, so the volunteers would pick them up and try to "wake" them up a little bit and then set them back down. Here Colin is waving to one.
Ciara loves turtles normally, but she wasn't quite sure what to make of this little one :)
After seeing the turtles, we grabbed some breakfast and then headed to the beach for some play time. Later in the afternoon, we took the kids to Build-a-Bear at the Brownsville Mall because it was too hot to be outside. Ciara chose a monkey, and Colin a snow leopard. We still had the gift certificate that Tina sent the kids for X-Mas, and Boo Boo covered the rest.
Stepping on the pedal to get his snow leopard filled up.
Giving his leopard a bath.
Ciara's favorite part was giving her monkey a "bath".
Colin picked out a very cute outfit for his snow leapard. He named her "White Cloud".
Ciara was very happy with her monkey. She walked all around the store with her.
That evening, we did a little fishing behind the condo. I caught what we thought was an eel at the time. Then a couple days later, Uncle Peter saw a picture of it on a poster in a restaurant, and we discovered it was actually a Cutlass Fish. It was definitely one of the meanest looking fish I've ever seen. Uncle Paul said it looked "prehistoric", and that fit perfectly. We all got a good look at it, then we cut him loose.
