A Sand Dollar Face Lift

So Jonathan survived his first mini exam.  He did really well!  They haven't received their official scores yet, but he feels good about it.  One of his classmates, Michelle Dalida, made the comment that there is nothing mini about this exam.  Certainly not the amount of studying and preparation that went in!  So thank goodness it's done.  He's 1/3 of the way done with the semester now!  1 down 2 to go...

In the meantime, Michelle Wells is back!!!  Woohoo!  It's been lonely during the week since she's been in Indiana, but it's also been kind of good for me.  It's forced me to focus on ADKOF stuff.  But it is SO good for her to be back.  My tan is already 2 shades darker just from the sun time with her since Wednesday!  We went out to Banana Bay Thursday (we haven't been there since the week before classes started!).  We have both been searching for sand dollars as long as we've been here.  Matt has found a sea biscuit and three sand dollars and we haven't found any!  Until Thursday.  Kim (a co-worker that came back with Michelle for a few days) was walking around out in the ocean and then just nonchalantly says "There's a sand dollar."  Michelle and I freaked!  So I grabbed it up.  Here's what it looked like straight out of the ocean:

I probably wouldn't have even noticed it at all because it was almost chocolate brown.  It had a cool little green patch on it too.  The tiny little spikes on the outside were moving really subtly which totally freaked Michelle out.  We brought it home and put it in some bleach.  Here's what I woke up to this morning!

It's so gorgeous isn't it!  The three that Matt found are bleaching now but they're already looking really cool.  But I have to say that if I wasn't obsessed about finding sand dollars before, I certainly am now!  Of course now the question is gonna be how the heck am I gonna get these things home??  I guess I'm gonna have to be creative...