We arrive early to snag a street meter, avoiding more expensive public-lot charges; $2 buys us two hours of strolling time.

As vendors pull out their rumba costumes, wrought iron peacocks, fur stoles, and mah-jongg sets, we wander through the stalls stretching along South Beach's famous Lincoln Road pedestrian mall. For 50 cents, Hunter surfaces with a Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl pin and Maddy grabs an old 19th Amendment suffragette button. A belt buckle with a tiny working roulette wheel in the center fascinates Hunter. Michelle considers a bracelet made of large green dice but decides it costs too much.

We pass rows of costume jewelry, pausing at a booth run by a gregarious couple, Niki Blacker and John Reubens, more New York transplants. Blacker is a concert-level pianist who has played Carnegie Hall. Reubens is a tenor with an operatic pedigree. They moved to Miami 11 years ago. They both perform in Broward County but love selling at the market. ("I put my first husband through law school doing this," Blacker confides.) Maddy and Michelle buy a group of '60s-vintage Lucite bracelets for $25 from them. A clerk in a South Beach boutique later tells Michelle she got a terrific deal. Maddy adds a sparkly lobster pin from a nearby booth for $10. We escape, keeping to our frugal $40 budget.

We swoop across the bridge toward town and stop at Parrot Jungle Island, home to 1,100 tropical birds and 2,000 varieties of plants.

Every family has its own set of eccentric interests. One of ours is a love of birds. We immediately find affinity for two very puffy St. Vincent parrots. "This pair of birds is currently on a diet to control their weight," reports a sign on their cage. "Please do not feed." They apparently don't take dieting any better than we do - they squawk and fight so loudly a park worker has to
intervene.