Spring Break Part IV

On Friday night after Weeki Wachee we went back home. On Saturday Andy was finally able to hang out with us because he had the day off from clinicals. We went to the Shell Factory in Ft. Myers, and they had a nature preserve (basically a zoo). Part of it was a petting zoo where the kids could touch the animals, but Ally was the only one who wanted to do so. The other kids maybe take after me and realize that touching animals is soooo gross.

In one place they had this aviary where you could go inside and animals were just roaming free. There were a couple of these big iguanas...

And a couple of really pretty peacocks...

...about a gazillion turtles (and fish), which we fed with their cups of food that were super inexpensive...

...a humongous tortoise, which scared the heck out of Ally when her back was turned and he walked up right behind her, and then I said, "Oops, Al, watch out, the turtle wants to get by." She turned around and jumped about 3 feet in the air. This guy was as big as she is!

This little green bird followed Bruce around the WHOLE time we were in there. Like he landed on his shoulder and wouldn't get off until one of the keeper ladies came and got him and put him on a tree branch, but then after that he came down from the tree and ran around Bruce's feet the entire time he was walking around, and then when we were leaving he tried to follow him out. It was so crazy!

After the nature preserve we had tickets for miniature golf there, but on the way over the kids wanted to climb up this wall. Well, Ally and Kylee did, anyway. You could climb up to the top, climb over, and climb down the other side. Ally kept wanting to go over, but since Andy couldn't reach that high he kept making her come back down the same side, and she was really disappointed. She is too brave!

I tried to help Skyler climb up the wall and he didn't want to have anything to do with it. After Ally and Kylee had done it several times he finally started climbing on his own and then said "Mom! Look! I'm almost to the top! Take my picture!" So I did. But just as a frame of reference, that's my stroller you can see on the far right of the wall. He climbed up about as high as the handle (so like...2.5 feet?) and then came back down. He was nowhere near the top. But I'm glad he faced his fear and at least attempted it!

Kylee went up and over the top a bunch of times. She was super fast.

After golfing we went into the little shops/museums they have inside for a few minutes. Kylee was the only one brave enough to stick her head inside this shark's mouth for a picture.

Skyler and Ally rode a fake dinosaur.

On Sunday night we went to the beach to watch the sunset. It was a little chilly, but so pretty, as always. We really need to do this more often while we're here.

Spring Break Part III - Camping & Weeki Wachee

On Thursday we headed up to a campground North of Tampa so that we could go to Weeki Wachee State Park on Friday. As we were setting up our sleeping bags and stuff in the tent, Colby fell asleep. Apparently riding in a car seat all morning is just exhausting.

While Colby took a nap, Grandpa, Grandma, Kylee and Skyler decided to head out on the pond in the canoes (this campground had FREE canoes and kayaks for us to use - it was fun!).

Ally decided she wanted to stay at camp with me and take a nap. The photo below is her pretending to sleep for like 4 minutes.

After her 4 minute "nap" was over, she came back out of the tent and stood on the dock with me to watch the others in the boats.

Of course once she saw how much fun they were having, she decided she wanted to try it, too. So they paddled back to the beach to get her a life jacket...

...and then came back to the dock to pick her up.

After a while Skyler and Ally decided to get out because they were wet, so grandma, grandpa and Kylee went to get Kayaks instead of the canoe.

Grandpa was a PRO at paddling. He was able to go fast without getting himself soaked. (Later when Ally was in my kayak and Skyler was in grandpa's kayak we had races across the pond, in which grandpa CREAMED me. I'm too slow!)

I was a little worried about letting Kylee do her own because if she couldn't paddle herself or steer back to the beach, nobody was going to be able to help her. However, she did excellent! She went back and forth across the pond several times, and even got pretty fast. At first she was trying to do it with the canoe paddle, but eventually she agreed to try the kayak paddle, and she discovered that it actually WAS easier.

There were several of these weird ducks by the pond, and Ally was convinced they wanted to eat her, though she wasn't scared at all. She was very cheerful about it. "I think those ducks just wants to eat me, mom!"

After dinner we went for a walk in the...forest? I'm really not sure what you call it when it's just a bunch of trees and bushes not in the mountains? Anyway, out in the middle of nowhere we saw Bigfoot. Yep. There you go, folks. He's real.

That night we very nearly froze to death. Okay, not really, but the temperature went down to 36 degrees, and since we are true Floridians and don't actually own winter coats, etc., it was COLD! We did bring pretty much every blanket I own, though, so it turned out okay.

 I bought Skyler this hat a couple of years ago because I thought it was cute, but then we left Utah before he grew into it, so it has just been in the top of the closet not being used. When I was digging out blankets I found it and tossed it in the car, and I'm glad I did! He wore it all night...

...and the entire next day, even after the temperature got up into the 70s again. He was the weird kid walking around in shorts and a t-shirt...and a thick knitted monster hat. Whatever floats your boat, I guess!

The next day we went to Weeki Wachee. The mermaid show was pretty lame (I'm not going to lie, it was even more lame than I was expecting it to be), but the kids loved it. Ally was convinced that the mermaids were real, and when one of them smiled and waved at the audience Ally was SURE she was smiling and waving at her specifically, because it was her birthday.

The water there was really clear and pretty.

When we were waiting in line to go on the riverboat ride the kids entertained themselves by looking down through the cracks in the dock at the fish swimming below.

Once we finally got on the boat the scenery was pretty. They said earlier in the day there were some manatees out, but we didn't get to see any. We did see some turtles though, and a bald eagle and his nest up in a tree.

Spring Break Part II - Ally's Birthday

For the last few weeks I've been thinking Ally's birthday was on Wednesday. I booked a camping trip for Thursday/Friday because I thought "Well we can't go on Ally's birthday or Andy won't see her at all!" (because he leaves at 4:30am usually, and the rest of us would be gone camping before he came home). Anyway, so after I made reservations I realized that her birthday was actually on Thursday, so Andy wouldn't see her at all. Oops! So we decided to just hold her birthday on Wednesday instead, since she wouldn't know the difference!

She wanted a rainbow on her cake (and flowers, but I didn't have time for that and she didn't mention it, so shhhhh!), but it was already past bedtime when the cake was cool enough to frost, so I threw this together super fast. She loved it. Little kids don't care at all if their cake is fancy or not!

She needs to work on her blowing skills. She blows by sticking her bottom lip out, so rather than extinguishing the candles she succeeded (after several attempts) in just blowing her bangs up out of her face. Finally Andy and I helped her blow them out.

I just can't believe she is already THREE. Where in the world did the time go? She is so talkative and so sassy. She doesn't take naps, but eats just about anything you put in front of her. She evens claims "I yove yettuce, mom!" And while I'm not sure she really LOVES lettuce, she does eat it without complaining, so that's nice!

Spring Break Part I

Last week was Spring Break, and Grandma Roxy and Grandpa Bruce came to play with us. One day we went to the Collier County Museum, and they had this cannon and the real sticks with the sponges on the end that they would use to stuff in the gun powder and cannon ball. Grandpa showed the kids how to do it, and they each took a turn. Then they pretended to light cannon.

When we go to the Bird Rookery swamp there is a section that has a couple of old railroad ties, and a picture of the old steam engine that used to go through there for logging. The sign by it says that the engine is now on display at the Collier County Museum. Skyler has always wondered about it, and when we were at the museum we got to see it. It's from 1910, and they let us climb up inside it and stuff.

We also went to the Naples pier and beach, and Colby dipped his feet in the ocean for the first time. Right after this photo was taken a wave came up and swamped 1/2 way up his back, so then he was unhappy...but it was pretty warm and he dried quick!

The next day we went to the swamp to see if we could spot some alligators, and boy did we ever! We only walked about 1.5 miles in, and we saw more than we've ever seen before.

There were a bunch of these black and yellow snakes in the water, and there was a guide there who said that it is their mating season, so they are everywhere right now. I don't like snakes, so I was super glad they were just in the water!

We also saw this cool pink and white bird. Kylee has a bird guide that she got from our friend Betsy when they were here last May, so she looked it up. I don't remember what she said it was called, but it has a big long beak that is flat like a platypus on the end.

There were also lots of other birds poking around, and Kylee was able to identify most of them with her bird guide.

We also saw some quite a few pretty butterflies. I think maybe because it was a little bit cooler on the day we went, more wildlife was out and about.

In almost the first pond we came to there was a mama alligator, and on various logs in the same pond we counted AT LEAST 20 babies. Some of them were swimming around and moving from log to log so it was hard to keep track, but at one point there were 20 that were out of the water and visible. Some of them were tiny (the guide told us they were born in October), and some were bigger. Apparently when alligators get to be about 18 months old their mother kicks them out of the nest, so they go find another mama with babies to hang out around for safety. So the bigger ones we saw might have been from last year, or they might've been from a different alligator family entirely.

It's so weird how they just climb up and lay all over the top of each other. I guess they were trying to keep warm?

For the photo below I'm holding a contest and the winner gets...the satisfaction of being the winner. If you zoom in REALLY close to this log, and look at the whole thing - HOW MANY baby alligators can you find? You'll be surprised at how many there are because from far away it just looks like a log.

We then moved on to another pond, and there was another mama with babies. At first we just saw one baby sitting on a log, but then I thought I saw this guy over in the bushes, so I zoomed in my camera to take a photo of him. I was pretty surprised when I looked more closely at the photo to see that there are actually FOUR babies in here. Can you spot them all?

In the end, we saw probably 30+ alligators total, including one that was waiting under a dock to ambush a bird. He kept bobbing his head up and down, waiting for a bird to get close enough. We think the birds new he was there, though, because they wouldn't get very close. They'd sneak up a little bit, then back away again. I'm not going to lie, it would have been super cool to see him snatch one!