So, first our daily recap of sleeping... Will did much better last night in his own room. We put him in the common area of our hotel room. Once he went down he woke up every two hours. Some might think that is a problem, but it is fairly common for Will so I will call it a win. The plus is that because he was in another room and I am able to jump up to deal with him at the drop of a hat, everyone else in the room slept wonderfully. He woke up around 7 and we woke everyone else up around 7:30 so we could start our day.
Once we all got dressed for the day, we went downstairs for breakfast. We love the breakfasts at Embassy Suites. They are really convenient and filled with a lot of different foods. Unfortunately, we are on the final leg of a trip which means that Kenzie is refusing most food. We think that (like me) her stomach doesn't deal well with eating out a lot of times in a row. We have luckily been able to get fruit into her at every meal at least, so she is getting something good for her. It will actually be nice to get home and get back to eating normally. She wouldn't even eat bacon this morning. She loves bacon but absolutely refused it so you can see how we are doing with food. Will is starting to do the same. Good thing he is breastfed. That is pretty much all he has had in the last few days because he is refusing solids right now too for the most part. While at breakfast I had a man stop me to tell me that his now 6-year-old daughter had a helmet when she was a baby. She wore it 3 months and her head is perfectly round now. I am always glad to hear success stories. Let's hope our success is just as good.
Anyway, after breakfast we got ready and headed out to Everglades Holiday Park. Steven has actually been before, but I have not. We knew about it prior to the TV show, but we are big fans of the Gator Boys show and were excited to get out there to ride the airboat and see the gator wrestling show. The drive was nice and easy and we made it fairly quickly even with South Florida weekday morning traffic.
We got there early and lucked out that the crowd was light. Before boarding our airboat we had a picture taken. They referred to it as a way to do a head count. I found myself wondering if that was so that they had a very recent photograph of you in case you fell out and a search party had to be sent out. Just kidding! I hope...
After the picture, we boarded our boat with our captain. I believe his name was Regis, but I can't actually remember. I was too busy dealing with two small children that I didn't catch it. He was really nice and knowledgeable though. We set out to start our tour and both kids were doing great! We checked out the locks by the park and then "went fast" to get out into the canals. Kenzie loved that part. She kept asking to go fast again. Then... it sort of started to get difficult. Will decided he had enough. He was obviously hot and I realized that I totally forgot to feed him before we left the dock. So... add: on a moving airboat in the middle of the Everglades to the list of random places I have nursed a bottle-refusing baby. Goodness! Thank goodness we had a small group of people on the airboat with us that were all very accommodating. The lady next to me told me that she has done crazy things like that too because her daughter refused bottles. Glad I'm not the only one.
We didn't see many gators. It was just so hot and daytime so they were not hanging around in their normal areas. The water level was also super low still as the rainy season is just beginning here. We looked in a few extra places where the water was deeper to see if we could find them, but we only saw a few little alligators. One plus to our tour though was that our captain enjoys feeding the birds. He brings popcorn with him and if he can, he stops the tour to let people feed the birds with him. Kenzie had to partake in that. One of the nice ladies on our tour actually let her come over and helped her feed the birds since it was difficult for Steven or I to get over there between me having Will and Steven being so tall. I think Kenzie would have remained out there all day if she would have been allowed to continue to "go fast". Will on the other hand was just hot and done with it. It was super still today. Barely a breath of breeze. We actually had to remove his helmet on the airboat. It was just too hot. He was sweating and starting to turn a really bright shade of red. He did much better once we removed it. That was the first time we have needed to do something like that. We even did Disney with it in 90 degree weather with no issues.
After the airboat tour we were able to watch the gator wrestling show. It is guaranteed that one of the people from the Gator Boys TV show will always do the show. We were able to see Ashley wrestle a gator today. I didn't realize how tiny she really is. It is amazing that someone so small can command those strong animals. She chose Leo for our show today. Watching her choose the gator was probably the best part. Apparently each gator in the enclosure does about one show a day... there is some gator union agreement, I think. =) She walked from one end of the enclosure to the other until she located Leo. How she knew them apart I do not know, but she swears she did. She taught us about how the Native American tribes from the area once wrestled gators and about the gators themselves as she did a few tricks including the ever popular "face off". It is impressive. I have a minor alligator obsession so I think doing that is so very cool. There was a minor technical difficulty during our show. Her mic went out so they had to fix that. In the midst of all of that, Leo decided he didn't want to be a part of the show any longer, I think. She was quite impressive though as they dealt with that.
After seeing the show we stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. Not the best food for us but Kenzie loves McDonalds and we were just hoping to get some food in the kid. She ended up eating 6 nuggets, the yogurt and milk that come with it, and an applesauce pouch that we brought. So, we got something into her.
After lunch we came back to the hotel to get ready to head down to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park aka the lighthouse beach. We didn't have long to turn around and head back out but we did pretty well and got everything ready and were back out the door before 3pm which was our goal. The drive down was interesting. We don't have traffic quite like that in Apopka or even in Orlando. Steven is okay driving in it, but it isn't fun. Once down on Key Biscayne (not a real "Key" for anyone keeping track that doesn't already know...), we found a Winn Dixie so we could pick up a couple of subs. Earlier this morning we stashed a couple of pieces of bread for Kenzie and we carry around little cups of peanut butter on trips. She will always eat a peanut butter sandwich so it is our back up plan if we have issues. You can usually find or buy bread when you are not at home so it works well for us and her.
Once we arrived at the beach we changed the kids into their suits (they were damp from the day before so we didn't want to make them ride in them all the way to Key Biscayne) and walked to the beach. We got right in. Kenzie and Will had a blast again. It is so amazing to see the difference in Kenzie from even the beginning of the summer and now. She was anti-swimming in the ocean just a few months ago. Now, she will walk into the water with no one helping her (if it isn't too rough) and loves to bounce with Daddy in the waves. Will just loves the water. If I haven't mentioned already, we are thinking that despite Kenzie being a July baby, that Will is going to be our water baby. He loves being in the ocean or pool. He was even splashed by a few waves today, got salt water in his eyes, and never missed a beat. I got out with the kids a few minute early because Kenzie wanted to play in the sand. Eventually she decided that she wanted to use her beach watering can to water the "grass" aka seaweed along the shoreline. Then she just walked her little self back into the ocean to get to Daddy. Seriously? Who is this kid and what did she do with my scaredy cat? I am so happy she is getting better with the ocean because we love beaches.
After the beach we went back, showered off, and set up our picnic. We always name our trips and finally tonight decided that when we print this out for our trip journal that this will be "The Beaches and Picnics Tour: Keys Vacation 2015". Aptly named since we have hit up 3 different beaches all with their own picnics along with Key West and a bunch of other things in the 4 days since leaving Mike and Sevie's house on Monday morning. Our final picnic of the trip was nice despite the heat and lack of a breeze today. I think the kids really seem to enjoy beaches and picnics. That makes us happy. =)
Our drive back was uneventful but traffic was a slight pain again. Will slept and Kenzie talked... the. entire. way. Once we got back to the hotel we gave the kids baths. Will went down easier tonight, thankfully. I expect him to be up every two hours or so again tonight. Tomorrow we will be heading to the pool in the morning before checking out of the hotel and heading back home. We are sad that vacation is ending but sort of looking forward to being home.
Once we all got dressed for the day, we went downstairs for breakfast. We love the breakfasts at Embassy Suites. They are really convenient and filled with a lot of different foods. Unfortunately, we are on the final leg of a trip which means that Kenzie is refusing most food. We think that (like me) her stomach doesn't deal well with eating out a lot of times in a row. We have luckily been able to get fruit into her at every meal at least, so she is getting something good for her. It will actually be nice to get home and get back to eating normally. She wouldn't even eat bacon this morning. She loves bacon but absolutely refused it so you can see how we are doing with food. Will is starting to do the same. Good thing he is breastfed. That is pretty much all he has had in the last few days because he is refusing solids right now too for the most part. While at breakfast I had a man stop me to tell me that his now 6-year-old daughter had a helmet when she was a baby. She wore it 3 months and her head is perfectly round now. I am always glad to hear success stories. Let's hope our success is just as good.
Anyway, after breakfast we got ready and headed out to Everglades Holiday Park. Steven has actually been before, but I have not. We knew about it prior to the TV show, but we are big fans of the Gator Boys show and were excited to get out there to ride the airboat and see the gator wrestling show. The drive was nice and easy and we made it fairly quickly even with South Florida weekday morning traffic.
We got there early and lucked out that the crowd was light. Before boarding our airboat we had a picture taken. They referred to it as a way to do a head count. I found myself wondering if that was so that they had a very recent photograph of you in case you fell out and a search party had to be sent out. Just kidding! I hope...
After the picture, we boarded our boat with our captain. I believe his name was Regis, but I can't actually remember. I was too busy dealing with two small children that I didn't catch it. He was really nice and knowledgeable though. We set out to start our tour and both kids were doing great! We checked out the locks by the park and then "went fast" to get out into the canals. Kenzie loved that part. She kept asking to go fast again. Then... it sort of started to get difficult. Will decided he had enough. He was obviously hot and I realized that I totally forgot to feed him before we left the dock. So... add: on a moving airboat in the middle of the Everglades to the list of random places I have nursed a bottle-refusing baby. Goodness! Thank goodness we had a small group of people on the airboat with us that were all very accommodating. The lady next to me told me that she has done crazy things like that too because her daughter refused bottles. Glad I'm not the only one.
We didn't see many gators. It was just so hot and daytime so they were not hanging around in their normal areas. The water level was also super low still as the rainy season is just beginning here. We looked in a few extra places where the water was deeper to see if we could find them, but we only saw a few little alligators. One plus to our tour though was that our captain enjoys feeding the birds. He brings popcorn with him and if he can, he stops the tour to let people feed the birds with him. Kenzie had to partake in that. One of the nice ladies on our tour actually let her come over and helped her feed the birds since it was difficult for Steven or I to get over there between me having Will and Steven being so tall. I think Kenzie would have remained out there all day if she would have been allowed to continue to "go fast". Will on the other hand was just hot and done with it. It was super still today. Barely a breath of breeze. We actually had to remove his helmet on the airboat. It was just too hot. He was sweating and starting to turn a really bright shade of red. He did much better once we removed it. That was the first time we have needed to do something like that. We even did Disney with it in 90 degree weather with no issues.
After the airboat tour we were able to watch the gator wrestling show. It is guaranteed that one of the people from the Gator Boys TV show will always do the show. We were able to see Ashley wrestle a gator today. I didn't realize how tiny she really is. It is amazing that someone so small can command those strong animals. She chose Leo for our show today. Watching her choose the gator was probably the best part. Apparently each gator in the enclosure does about one show a day... there is some gator union agreement, I think. =) She walked from one end of the enclosure to the other until she located Leo. How she knew them apart I do not know, but she swears she did. She taught us about how the Native American tribes from the area once wrestled gators and about the gators themselves as she did a few tricks including the ever popular "face off". It is impressive. I have a minor alligator obsession so I think doing that is so very cool. There was a minor technical difficulty during our show. Her mic went out so they had to fix that. In the midst of all of that, Leo decided he didn't want to be a part of the show any longer, I think. She was quite impressive though as they dealt with that.
After seeing the show we stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. Not the best food for us but Kenzie loves McDonalds and we were just hoping to get some food in the kid. She ended up eating 6 nuggets, the yogurt and milk that come with it, and an applesauce pouch that we brought. So, we got something into her.
After lunch we came back to the hotel to get ready to head down to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park aka the lighthouse beach. We didn't have long to turn around and head back out but we did pretty well and got everything ready and were back out the door before 3pm which was our goal. The drive down was interesting. We don't have traffic quite like that in Apopka or even in Orlando. Steven is okay driving in it, but it isn't fun. Once down on Key Biscayne (not a real "Key" for anyone keeping track that doesn't already know...), we found a Winn Dixie so we could pick up a couple of subs. Earlier this morning we stashed a couple of pieces of bread for Kenzie and we carry around little cups of peanut butter on trips. She will always eat a peanut butter sandwich so it is our back up plan if we have issues. You can usually find or buy bread when you are not at home so it works well for us and her.
Once we arrived at the beach we changed the kids into their suits (they were damp from the day before so we didn't want to make them ride in them all the way to Key Biscayne) and walked to the beach. We got right in. Kenzie and Will had a blast again. It is so amazing to see the difference in Kenzie from even the beginning of the summer and now. She was anti-swimming in the ocean just a few months ago. Now, she will walk into the water with no one helping her (if it isn't too rough) and loves to bounce with Daddy in the waves. Will just loves the water. If I haven't mentioned already, we are thinking that despite Kenzie being a July baby, that Will is going to be our water baby. He loves being in the ocean or pool. He was even splashed by a few waves today, got salt water in his eyes, and never missed a beat. I got out with the kids a few minute early because Kenzie wanted to play in the sand. Eventually she decided that she wanted to use her beach watering can to water the "grass" aka seaweed along the shoreline. Then she just walked her little self back into the ocean to get to Daddy. Seriously? Who is this kid and what did she do with my scaredy cat? I am so happy she is getting better with the ocean because we love beaches.
After the beach we went back, showered off, and set up our picnic. We always name our trips and finally tonight decided that when we print this out for our trip journal that this will be "The Beaches and Picnics Tour: Keys Vacation 2015". Aptly named since we have hit up 3 different beaches all with their own picnics along with Key West and a bunch of other things in the 4 days since leaving Mike and Sevie's house on Monday morning. Our final picnic of the trip was nice despite the heat and lack of a breeze today. I think the kids really seem to enjoy beaches and picnics. That makes us happy. =)
Our drive back was uneventful but traffic was a slight pain again. Will slept and Kenzie talked... the. entire. way. Once we got back to the hotel we gave the kids baths. Will went down easier tonight, thankfully. I expect him to be up every two hours or so again tonight. Tomorrow we will be heading to the pool in the morning before checking out of the hotel and heading back home. We are sad that vacation is ending but sort of looking forward to being home.
Comments
Post a Comment