Florida in March: Wild Florida

On Friday, March 9, we flew to Florida to rendezvous with the Kringel fam. We had no time to spare getting to the airport, and Tiny was wholly uncooperative. As we struggled to rush in with all of our luggage, car seats, the pack n' play, etc., she decided she would only crawl.

Ever and Wrenzy watched some shows with their new headphones. Then Tiny decided she wanted in on the action, so we gave Ever a pair of ear buds and split the sound among all three of them.

Ever stroked Wrenzy's hair when she got tired.

Tiny insisted on dragging one of the rolly bags at all times. The crew thought it was cute. Blurry picture.

Jim wanted a car that could fit his dad, Dawn and Ed, and us, and he thought we needed something bigger than a minivan given the giganticness of our car seats. The only thing bigger option was a huge, 15-person van. The rental car place took forever, and the girls were going crazy. I had to take them outside and let them climb on everything. Ever tried to scale the fence:

Tiny tried to follow:

As we were loading up, we determined that a minivan probably would have worked fine. When I saw a whole bunch of bugs crawling around in our giant van as they hunted our Taco Bell crumbs later that night, I really wanted Jim to exchange it for a minivan. But we stuck with the van for the whole trip, and it did the job.

We flew in and out of Orlando, which is a bit of a trek from Jim's dad's place in Port St. Lucie. Jim booked us a place in Kissimmee on Airbnb for that first (very late) night. Saturday morning we visited Wild Florida, which is just south of Kissimmee on the way to Port St. Lucie.

I saw my first swamp. I think they are fascinating. Louisiana is probably going to need to go on my bucket list.

This alligator was enormous:

Wrenzy enjoyed the goats at the petting zoo. Ever wanted to touch an animal but was too scared. We started to leave, and then she finally got in a quick touch.

Sloths always remind me of Deetrix since he loves them.

We rushed past everything to get back to a show that turned out to be mostly a bizarre, unscripted talk by a teenager about respecting the animals and not trying to keep them as pets. He and his comrade gave us a close-up view of this lizard fellow:

At the end, they brought out a small alligator. By that point, I had stepped away with an unruly Tiny, but I didn't feel as if I was missing much. Let's face it - I really wanted to see a big gator. We did get to touch a baby gator at a different point, and that was fun.

The girls were most interested in the little play area.

The play area was next to this body of water that was filled with gators. I stood on the bench by the park and watched and photographed them over the fence. The girls didn't have much interest. 

We walked the loop to see the other animals and then got another good gator view before we left. 

Poor Missy passed out in a really uncomfortable-looking position in the car. Tiny rubbed her hair while she slept. So sweet.

We drove to Jim's dad's house and went out to dinner in Port St. Lucie. A highly-recommended restaurant turned us down for lack of a reservation even though it was before 5:00 P.M. and there were many open tables. We ended up at Denny's. Then we dropped Jim's dad and went to our new place, where Ever slept like this:

Sunday we went to sacrament meeting and lunched with Jim's dad. Then I stayed home to let the girls nap while Jim went up to Orlando to pick up Dawn and Ed. We all had dinner at Cracker Barrell, where Tiny stayed busy with this game involving golf tees and holes in a block of wood.