Air Boat Ride & Holding Baby Gators

Last week my sister Connie and her family, and Andy's dad came to visit us for Kylee's baptism. While they were here we decided to go on an air boat ride in the Everglades because we'd heard it was fun. We found a place that gives you an hour air boat ride, plus lets you hold baby alligators, and gives you tickets to an animal sanctuary nearby as well. This is before our ride. Sugi and Pax, Connie and Lucy, Grandpa and Ally, and Skyler and I took turns holding the alligator.

Notice Skyler's face here - he wasn't so sure about touching it!

The airboats were really fun. They go pretty fast through these little rivers in the tunnels of trees, and sometimes they spin around, and purposely make the boat bounce back and forth, etc. Skyler LOVED it. He thought the "bouncy boats that were kind of loud" were super fun.

After our ride we went to the animal sancutary, where all the cages had signs like this. Definitely makes you think twice about sticking your fingers through the fence, right!?!

When we were standing by a crocodile cage looking at a huge crocodile who looked like he was dead (as crocodiles and alligators always do), he suddenly jumped out of the water out of nowhere and snapped his jaws. It was SOOOO scary. I mean, he was in a cage, but it was so fast, and so loud. Connie and I screamed, and Connie cried. I don't know if he thought Ally and Lucy looked like lunch, or what. Yikes.

At the sanctuary they had another baby alligator that people could hold. I half-jokingly asked Skyler if he wanted to hold it, and he said yes. I was a little surprised. I said, "Really? You want to hold it?" He said, "Yes, I do." So we got up there and the guy showed him where to put his hands, and he held the baby alligator. Then I looked more closely at this photo I took, and decided I'm not super thrilled about how loosely that mouth thing is wrapped around his jaw. It seems like he could just tilt his head down, it would fall off, and he could go ahead and bite my kid. Hmmm.

They also had lions, tigers and a panther at the sanctuary, as well as turtles (which were all mixed in with baby alligators - you would think the alligators would eat them, but I guess they don't eat turtles?), snakes and some other weird looking lizards.

As we were leaving the sanctuary there was another alligator lounging on the grass next to the highway. Skyler wanted me to take his picture with it. The first attempt is the one above. When I showed it to him he said, "Wait, mom, I blinked! Let's do another one." So the one below is the result. I'm not sure "blinked" is the right way to describe the top one, but at least he did better the second time!

Andy's dad was more brave and got a bit closer than I was willing to let Skyler get!

The airboat ride and sanctuary were about 45 minutes away from our house. On the way there and back Connie thought it was crazy that we have these signs all along the sides of our roads, even within the city. Apparently there are quite a few panthers here (so much so that the highway south of the city has a lower speed limit at night in order to prevent as many panther-car accidents), but I have yet to see one outside of a sanctuary.

Random Happenings

Skyler has been working on writing his letters, and the other day he managed to write his name. I had to draw boxes for him so he knew which size each letter should be, but he did it all by himself. We haven't started working on lower case letters yet, but he's getting pretty good with the uppercase.

Andy wants you all to know that this is what we are really doing in Florida. We've opened up a burger and shake place, and apparently we serve breakfast.

When it rains, Skyler and Ally have found a new game. They take bowls out to he patio and collect rain water, then use it to wash off their picnic table and other patio toys. Ally doesn't understand the concept of standing in the covered part of the patio and sticking her bowl out under the rain, so she always goes all the way out and gets drenched.

We have a Children's Museum in Naples that is pretty close to our house. One of my friends from the ward told me that you can check-out family passes from the library and go for free. There are always 7-8 holds, but if we put one on hold with my card, Andy's card, and Kylee's card, we can get passes every month or two. We got our first ones a couple of weeks ago, and I took Ally and Skyler one morning while Kylee was at school. They LOVED it. We stayed there for four hours, and they would have stayed longer. I forced them to leave because it was way past lunch time and I was starving!

One day I went looking for Ally and Skyler because they were being way too quiet playing upstairs. I found them laying in my shower reading books. Ally had applied blue eye shadow to one whole side of her face, and had my deodarant out as well. And yes, that is her wearing underwear on the outside of her onesie. She loves to wear underwear. Now that she is bottle and binki free at bedtime, I think we'll just potty train her.

Ally Shenanigans

About two weeks ago Kylee built a fort in our front room.

The next day while Kylee was at school, Ally was in there playing. I checked on her a few times and she was happy and having fun.

Then I went to organize the pantry in the next room, and after a while I realized Ally was being way too quiet. I went over to check on her again, and she came crawling out of the fort like this.

The she showed me how she had it all the way up her legs on both sides:

The she proudly showed me the bottom of her feet:

Then I got some baby wipes and started wiping off her arms...and she lifted up her shirt to show me this:

Yikes. I almost died. If you look really closely, you can see that she was very meticulous about making lines with every single marker color she had. She said, "Wook, mom! Colors!" As it turns out, Kylee left markers in the fort, and Ally thought they were meant for decorating herself. Amazingly, she didn't get any marker on her jammies or the floor. Just ALL OVER her body!

In other Ally news:

1) We went to the alligator walk last Monday (a week ago), and Ally stood on top of a fire ant pile and got 15+ fire ant bites on her leg before Andy and his dad were able to strip her down and brush them all off of her. At first they didn't look too bad...but somehow as time goes by they seem to be getting bigger and uglier. Apparently that happens if you scratch them, but how do you stop a one year old from scratching?!? Let's hope they go away soon.

2) Last Tuesday (the day after the fire ants), Ally escaped from Andy at Kohls and nearly gave me a heart attack. We were shopping for jackets for the kids, and Ally was with Andy in the little boy section while Skyler was with Rich and I in the toddler section. All of a sudden Andy walks over and says, "Hey, is Ally over here with you guys?" See, Ally loves to run around the racks of clothes when we shop. However, she usually just runs around the same rack over and over and thinks it's funny to come crashing into your legs each time. She was apparently doing this to Andy, but one time she didn't come around. He went in search of her and she was gone. We started running around yelling for her. Other customers joined the hunt. I found an employee and gave her a description. She radioed all the other employees. Finally an elderly lady told me she had seen a little girl run through the dressing area. I ran through there yelling her name, and heard someone call out, "She's over here!" She was happily playing with tubes of lotion in the beauty department, on the opposite side of the store from where we were. The employee there had caught her, and was keeping her from running away again. When I scooped her up I was crying and she was laughing. Crazy little thing didn't even know that she was lost. She's going to be the death of me, I swear!

3) On a happy note - Ally is binki free! Not two weeks ago she was addicted to her binki. Like she would have it in her mouth 24/7 if we would let her. If we took it away she would find it no matter where it was hidden. She would drag chairs over to climb up to the highest counter, etc. If we didn't let her have it she would scream bloody murder. You might think she was being tortured. Then while our family was here last week, we lost a binki at the beach, and then we lost her other one on our air boat ride. That night we put her to bed with no binki. Then the next, and the next. Suddenly it's been over a week, and she is binki free! We even went to Disney World where she had to sleep in her pack n' play in the same room with us, and she survived without it. Ha.Le.Lujah!