God is truly awesome! I couldn't ask for anything more than to spend time with my parents at their home. We didn't think we were able to visit them in Ave Maria this vacation because of my Mom's health, but God took care of it. The kids were so excited to just do all their favorite things when visiting Lola & Lolo!
First order of business: Swimming at the water park.
I don't think Bernadette remembers the water park from last year. All my kids are practicing their new swimming skills and just enjoying it so much! Anne was able to go down the water slide for the first time by herself. It's funny to observe which child takes to the water more than the other. Bernadette loved jumping into the water and going under and coming back out. No issues, no fear!
We visited the water park often and each time we had the pool pretty much to ourselves. I couldn't have asked for better circumstances.
We also went alligator hunting all over the lakes in Ave Maria.
Good thing I brought our trusty binoculars! This year we didn't seem to spot as many alligators as we did last year. Perhaps, we just got tired since we didn't have our golf cart to drive us around in to lake after lake. We made those kids walk!
Typical Florida weather, it always starts raining during parts of the day. You can see it coming here! We headed back to Lolo & Lola's house.
Lately, my kids have been interested in fishing. I was sad because my parents used to own a boat when they lived in Marco Island. My father has sold it since. My father loved being on the ocean and growing up, we had a boat and went fishing quite often on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Once I told my dad about my kids wanting to fish he bought some rods and took us back to Marco Island to go fishing off a pier. My kids were so excited! We had some failed attempts here at home on the Potomac River.
This is the proper fishing stance when waiting for a bite!
Anne was so patient waiting for the fish to bite. I thought Patrick and Tommy would be more excited to fish, but they weren't really patient like Anne was and sort of gave up, however they really enjoyed the excitement of the catch and watching the fish gasp for air, flail around and die. Typical.
This is a picture of my dad with my nephew Ben. He had just caught a sheephead. I ended up fishing myself and caught, maybe one. Since I was fishing, I didn't get any pics of my kids' catches. Oh well. Anne caught a few fish which made her very happy! In total, we caught around 8 fish, I think? Most of them were red snapper which is very delicious. Some were small some were bigger - not huge. It was enough for me to take home, scale, gut and fry them up for dinner! Yum. Anne never eats fish when I serve it for dinner, but since she caught the fish she was more willing to try it. She said, "Tastes like chicken!" She probably had that one bite and that's it.
While the action was going on, Joe was hanging out with Bernadette. I thought she looked so sassy with those sunglasses! She eventually found hanging out with Lola (in the back) and Lolo in the cool car eating snacks and drinking water more relaxing then fishing.
The next day we planned on going to Wooten's Everglades Animal Sanctuary to hold alligators. They offered air boat rides, too but we've been there and done that!
We got there in time for the alligator feeding! There were these people in the caged area throwing chicken parts to the alligators. These were huge gators! They were all resting in all parts of the lake, but once the caretakers came into the gate, they slowly started moving into one direction toward the food. Once the food was thrown to them, they'd jump up and catch it and just start thrashing in the water while eating it. It was quite impressive.
Then we headed over to the place where we could hold alligators. No one was there! I was wondering why? The handler took a small alligator out and handed it to Anne. No fear at all. He put a rubber band over it's mouth for safety. We all got to hold it.
I was most excited to have Patrick hold the alligator since it was his favorite animal! I wasn't sure if he was going to be timid or not - nope! He was eager and willing. Look at that smile.
Before I held the gator I was wondering if it could tell if the holder was nervous or not and it can! I took hold of the gator and it started to wiggle around a lot. I quickly changed my grip and showed it who was boss! When Eddie held the gator, it jumped out of his grip and started running away. It didn't choose to jump in the water nearby, but back into the cage where, we believe, his mama was.
Then they gave us another gator to hold.
I didn't care to hold this one at all. Anne said it was so heavy!
They must be used to being carried.
I really like this picture!
We were able to spend as much time with these gators as we wanted. It was really great and our kids just loved it! After holding the gators, we walked around and looked at the other wild animals in the sanctuary. I had to laugh at this one sign.
I don't think I would have wanted to pet a venomous snake, cougar, tiger nor the crocodiles. No, thanks.
The next day we packed up our stuff and started driving back home. On the way back we decided to make Okefenokee State Park (in GA) one of our stops.
We did some hiking in here.
And took a 90 minute boat ride through the swamp. Towards the end of the boat ride it started pouring rain. We just missed it.
It was really nice to get back home after such a great vacation. Thanks to my sister, nephew and parents for taking us in and take over your homes!
Bonus picture:
While we were fishing, Tommy had collected some rocks/shells/coral and put them together so nicely. He asked me to take a picture of it. I believe there is a bag in this house with a bunch of rocks/shells/coral in it.
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