We like turtles

Why do we like turtles so much? Well, we don't necessarily love turtles more than we love some other animals (like dolphins) - Alissa is the one who really likes turtles - but the turtles I'm going to talk about have a story.

The story begins in Catalina when we took a weekend trip there with the Sorensons. We slept on a sailboat that they had rented, and at one point, we went to look in some of the shops in Avalon. Kimberly and I walked into a store where they had all kinds of souvenirs for sale, but what immediately attracted my eye were a bunch of hand-carved animal figures. The paper with information about the figures explained that they are made out of a iron wood, which is one of the most dense woods in the world, and which grows natively in Mexico. These figures had been hand carved in Mexico, and the sent up to the United States (how they found their way to Catalina, I don't know).

One figure - a nicely sized turtle - quickly caught my attention, and I decided that I wanted it (I'm a big fan of wood things). I showed it to Kimberly, who said she liked it, but that she like a smaller turtle better, as it had more personality. We went back and forth for a while about which one we were going to get, and I eventually conceded - we got the smaller of the two turtles.

This is a picture of the turtle we ended up purchasing while at Catalina.

However, there was more to the story that I didn't know. At the time we knew that we were expecting our first child in December, and Kimberly thought that it would be a nice Christmas gift to complete the turtle family. So, unbeknownst to me, Kimberly had Mom Sorenson return to the shop after we had left it, and get both the larger turtle that I had liked, as well as a very small turtle that we had also seen while we were there. When Christmas came around, we ended up with two more turtles that totally took me by surprise. The turtle family, though, is now complete, and they are all so very cute. :)

Our turtle family. The original turtle we purchased is on the top left. Both mommy and daddy are looking out for baby, who swims ahead.