Tattle Tales: Grand Cayman Island: Day 2

When you wake up to this, you know it's going to be a good day.

Less than 18 hours after arriving, E was serious when she proclaimed, "I'm going to live here when I grow up. Seriously, I'm living here."

Although he looks a little down, J was just as happy as could be soaking up some sun while he waited for us to go through the daily (nearly hour long) sunscreen ritual.

There is never a vacation from reading...

We finally made it out the door to have a great morning of exploring and snorkeling.

J and E were rock star snorkelers right off the bat, and there were tons of fish under the dock right off shore.

We ran into these familiar folks in the morning as well. This picture was taken the night before. Happy Anniversaries! Can you guess which couple has been wed 63 years? Sixty-three!!! There's a combined 72 years of marriage between these two lovely couples. We were so blessed to be able to share our vacation with all of them!

I stole this picture off Facebook because we were actually in bed before they arrived. Note to self: don't post pictures on Facebook if I don't want them to end up on somebody's blog. :)

Up to this point in the vacation, I had only snapped pictures with my phone and new point-and-shoot camera. Why the new camera, you ask? Well, I really wanted something that was a little less fragile and a lot more waterproof. That's necessary for the beach, you know.

In the afternoon, we traveled up to Rum Point to catch an awesome catamaran for a nice cruise on the crystal clear waters.

It's so awesome that our kids have been able to experience a vacation with their great grandparents. It's a bit of a bummer that their luggage didn't arrive with them, but they were still troopers even in jeans.

Apparently the new camera had a smudge of unnoticed sunscreen on the lens. Oops.

E knew exactly what to do...

A few miles offshore...

We've arrived at today's destination...

Stingray City!

There's a sand bar a few miles off the coast of the island where wild stingrays have been coming for years to feed on the scraps the fishermen used to throw to them. These beauties are friendly but still are wild, including intact barbs.

They were much larger than I had even imagined.

The longer we were in the water, the more J began to freak out. He couldn't shake the Steve Irwin story from his mind and that led to some panicking.

E apparently never heard the Crocodile Hunter's death story, so she was good to go. I was more concerned about an encounter with a wild dolphin than a barb in the chest because our guides made a big deal out of the possible danger of those large mammals.

Barb...

I was so excited to put this camera to the test.

But right after I took the photo of the wild dolphin's dorsal fin (eek! wild dolphin!) sticking out of the water (small triangle right above the head in the middle), my camera battery died.

This line from The Cat in the Hat movie went through my head...

I was so disappointed in myself for forgetting the cardinal rule of photography...check the battery.

I wasn't able to get any photos from the snorkeling time after we left the stingrays, but thank God Grandma came through with this shot from the boat.