Alligator Farm - Take 2

We decided to go and enjoy the Alligator farm one more time until the horrible humid and hot days come our way. It's very similar to the feeling I would get up north when I knew cold weather was upon us and I needed to get the girls outside as much as possible to enjoy the weather before we were cooped up inside from blizzards and snow and all things freezing.
Yeah, its kinda like that except we know the hot days are coming. The days of any hope of wearing your hair in anything but uptight in a ponytail are almost gone.
(yeah, thanks humidity)

Anyway, on this particularily beautiful day we went to visit our favorites at the Gator Farm...to me that's the bird sanctuary.
I am still in total awe of the beautiful warm weather birds. They are big, beautiful and so graceful. I could watch them all day.
So we made our way through the trees dotted with hundreds of big white birds.





...and I think this stork was eyeing up the girlies to eat them for lunch.


Of course we saw all the usual suspects- the cranes,


The herons,


...and some not so usual suspects.
I like to call these guys the platypus birds.


I also had a strange ncounter with a beast of a bird. It was huge! I mean ostrich big! But he had the most beautiful colors.
...and I think he was trying to perform some jedi mind tricks through his fence.


And although we see storks, cranes, herons and egrets all the time in the ponds here by our house, I was totally amazed to catch a glimpse of some baby egrets! Awwww!


...and that was when my camera battery dieed.
Crap.
Of course it was on the one day the toothless crocodile was smiling wide, the kimodo dragon came right up to say hi and Maximo, the biggest alliagator ever was in the water observation tank which (never happens).
Yeah.
I missed it all.
So you'll have to take my word for it whenI say that we had all sorts of fun!

Snakeskin

Literally. Snakeskin.
The girls found it mighty cool that they found this incredibly long and totally in tact snake skin...it was taller than 44" Bryn!



But all that means to me is that there is an even bigger snake slithering around waaaaay to close to our yard. Ewwww!


I know my blogs have been lagging a bit, so I will be updating soon. It seems every ounce of energy I even think about has been sucked up by the growing baby bump...
But we are in fact still alive and well.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

Hopping Down the Bunny trail!



Ava obviously was not "down" with her sister's Easter basket tomfoolery...


I found it very interesting to watch the girls look for eggs this year, as their distinct personalities shone through in their search methods.

Bryn ran from egg to egg...she collected as many possible!




Ava, on the other hand, walked around almost methodically. She would open each egg on the spot to decide whether it was worthy of putting into her basket.


After the girls decided they found all the eggs (and ate quite a bit of sugary goodness), we played outside with some new spring toys.
Once again, good ol Daddy was there to play.

I even managed to capture him playing with the purdy ribbon streamers. All I can say is it takes a strong man to be comfortable to play with pretty ribbons.




Yes, I lerve that man.



A beautiful fun-fulled day.
Let the sugar comas begin...

cauch

This is what Avie calls "chalk"....she says "cauch"...makes me smile everytime. I dunno, it sounds like a taboo word or something to me.

Spring is well underway down here, so chalk, skipping ropes and bubbles are in full bloom.
The girls really love to color on the driveway with Tom. This is good because Tom is good at drawing and they always come up with some interesting pictures...although I really do have to monitor him to keep his pictures G-rated.
Me, on the other hand, can barely draw a stick figure. It's so bad that Ava has infact denied my attempts at drawing lions and elephants. She even asked for Bryn's help as Bryn draws better than I.

Here they are drawring with their Dad. (you tell me who's having more fun).




I am sure there will be about a billion more chalk pictures as it seems to be something we do on a regular basis.

Good Morning surprises!

Bryn, my early bird, wakes much earlier than the rest of us or even earlier than the normal population. Luckily, she's at the age where she can quietly entertain herself without getting into too much trouble. (although I have had to hide the scotch).
But lately, I have been waking to some strange sights.
Usually, I will wake up with a new picture by Bryn next to my head on the pillow:




My absolute new favorite, is waking to Lulu the Wondercat all dolled up with no place to go! I managed to catch her one morning after Bryn had done her best to give Lulu the Wondercat a new look.



All I can say is seriously, Lulu, you need to talk to your stylist, because that's just a little too formal for a Saturday morning! (but you look FABULOUS anyway).

Rain rain go away...

...and only come back between 2 and 4 am when we are all sleeping!
(oh? you don't know that version?)

We've been rained on the past couple days. Not just dreary ol rain, but Florida torrential downpours.
Now because I can not stand to spend a whole 24 hours in the house, I patiently waited for the opportunity to go outside between downpours as we had been in the house almost 2 whole hours...straight.

I went into my rainy day stash o' stuff and pulled out some new markers.
But not your regular ol' markers...oh no-
Super cool window markers!

I bought these in a pregnancy stooper thinking they'd be fun and we'd all have a ball coloring on the windows...but that's where my reason and logic stopped.

It dawned on me as they stared at me with wide eyes when I gave them permission to color on the windows, that maybe this would not be the brightest idea in the world.
Maybe I was teaching them that it was okay to color on windows.
(Although it's not okay to color on the walls, as we do not live in a barn and that would be ridiculous, but windows- windows were fair game!!)

Fortunately for me, the girlies are old enough to understand that these markers were the ONLY ones we could use and we ONLY colored on the windows...so we avoided a whole 'nother mess.

It ended up being the fun that I had originally intended (although there was a little part of me that felt like a dirty little graffiti artist coloring on my own windows!)




The problem was in the "washable" marker part of it all.
These markers initallly wash off all easy-peasy with some windex and papertowels, but there is now a constant cloudy film on the windows.
After about 4 separate attempts to wipe the windows, they are almost transparant again.

Anyway, that killed about 10 minutes...actually it was close to an hour when the calculate the cleaning and re-cleaning time-

when I noticed that the rain had let up!
YAY!!! Freedom!
I told the girlies to get their rainboots and umbrellas!
Then off we went for a "rain walk".

Yep....its one of my favorite things to do (next to eating Cadbury cream eggs and watching Lulu the wondercat get all dressed up by Bryn).
A very wise friend of mine (and former boss at the Montessori school I worked) once told me that-
"There is no such thing as bad weather- just poor preparation"
But I love that quote! It's so true!
The rain is much more fun when you are prepared for it. (although I am not too sure you could apply the same quote to a typhoon or a tornado).

Anyway, we headed out. Girls in their rain gear and me with my not-so-waterproof camera to catch it all.








We spent an hour walking around our neighborhood looking for puddles and small ponds to splash in and get a little wet. Okay, alot wet, but at least we made it home before the next monsoon hit (because I surely was not prepared for that).

All in all, a rainy, but fun day!