Jellyfish and Barracuda at the Cove

We've been hitting the cove as much as possible lately to soak up as much of it as we can.  On Friday we went with our friends Amanda, Heather, Sidney, Sally, Danielle and Emma.

Amanda took pictures of the kids and I can't help but post all of them.  She has such an eye for candid moments that capture the kids so well.

In that first picture, Eli is making his "CHEESE!" face.

Alden and Emma get along great.  They're only a couple of months apart in age and they are both precocious - full of knowledge (they believe, anyway :-) and inquisitiveness.  It's hilarious to hear them playing together.

Poor little Gracen got quite the tar-stained face.  When they did the airport runway (which is right up the hill from the cove), they buried the extra tar at the cove.  Whose idea that was, I can't imagine.  Everytime it gets hot, the tar boils up from under the sand and rocks.  Somehow it always gets everywhere!

To liven things up, there were a bunch of local teens there, blasting away their music for us.  They were spearfishers as well and caught this 3 ft barracuda right before we got there.  Alden and Eli were so curious about it!

So I took their picture by the fish once the teens got it strung up.  At one point, Alden wouldn't smile so, trying to get him to smile, Amanda said to him, "Make a face like you'd make if you just caught this!"  And this is the face Alden did:  (Eli, of course, was quick to do the same)

To make the trip even MORE adventuresome, the cove was full of jellyfish!  We saw a few small ones washed ashore and Heather caught one in a cup.  They sting if you touch them, but jellyfish the size of these ones (softball size) only feel like a pinch when they sting you.

When Jaron came home that night and I told him about the jellyfish, he told me some of his adventures with jellyfish.  He said he's seen them larger than dinner plates (and I believe him - he once came home with a 2-inch gash on his shoulder from a jellyfish that he said was paralyzing for a few seconds!) and they're not completely opaque when they're that big.  He also said that he once swam through a whole cloud of quarter-sized ones.  Being that small, they didn't sting but just felt like a wall of sliminess.  He's sure going to miss his adventures in snorkeling when he leaves this island!

Also, on Saturday we garage-saled a bunch of our stuff down in Windwardside with Amanda and Danielle since we're all leaving this semester.  We had a lot of fun but the kids didn't last very long before they were ready to be done!