Cypress Gardens

Monday morning I woke up Jace a little earlier than normal so that we could head to Cypress Gardens before the heat hit.  As you can see from the below picture and fresh tears running down his cheeks, he does not like when he's woken up early and then has to WAIT for his breakfast to be made.  But since I'm not super mom I can't just snap my fingers and make fresh frozen waffles appear.  They take at least two minutes to make from scratch throw in the toaster.

NOT happy!

After breakfast, we hopped in the car and drove to Moncks Corner, where the Cypress Swamp Gardens are located.  It's about a twenty minute drive from us.  We had never been before but had been anxious to check it out after hearing others talk about it, and seeing it in the movie The Notebook. (The scene with the ducks and the boat if you're wondering...)

We met up with some of our mom and munchkin friends and had a fun time strolling through the different buildings before walking the trails.  There was a building full of birds and ducks that all the kids really enjoyed running through.  There were fresh-out-of-the-womb baby quails that were so small it was unbelievable!  There were also some turtles and fish and butterflies.  In other words, the kids loved it!

Ducking down for a better view of some birdies

Looking at the fish and turtles swimming

Cypress the wood duck

They were having a staring contest I think...

There were some other fun buildings to explore,  Jace's favorite was the aquarium building where he got to see all the fish and sea creatures swimming around in the lit-up tanks.  There was a giant tortoise swimming around with turtles riding around on his back.  So funny to watch!  Once we headed outside again we stopped for a quick peak at the aligators sunbathing.  Yuck.  Am I the only one that gets the heeby jeebies just from looking at them?  Maybe it's because now I could see one just randomly in my backyard ready to attack me.  Definitely wouldn't find that in Minnesota!

Aligators sunbathing...

There were plenty of Aligators in the wild living in the swampy areas that we walked through.  We even saw a cute little baby aligator posing for pictures...

Baby Aligator

We walked the trails for a while and enjoyed the humid weather.  Having a stroller was not that convenient so I'll definitely remember next time to bring my hiking backpack or baby carrier for Jace and then do a little more of a hike without worrying about stroller accessibility.  Since we live in the same county as Cypress Gardens we get in for free the third Saturday of every month, so we'll probably go back on one of those days next time!  It was very pretty seeing all the trees growing right out of the swamps and reflecting against the water, but alot of the flower blooms on plants had already died because it's starting to get too hot.

We spent a couple hours at Cypress Gardens and then headed home all sweaty from the swampy humidity.  Check out Jace's sweaty mohawk while he ate his lunch...

"Daddy, please let mommy cut my hair...
it's so HOT!"

That night Tate was in Memphis so Jace and I played together and watched Jace's first ever full length movie "Horton Hears a Who".  He really liked the movie because he loves elephants, but who are we kidding... he didn't sit still for very much of it.  Instead he liked going back and forth between his couch and his new favorite toy, which is the Playskool ball shoot thing, I forgot what it's called.  Jace had loved it at a friends house one time, and I saw it at Goodwill for $1.40 the other day so I picked it up.  I don't know what it is about the toy, but it seems like all kids go crazy over it.  Which makes sense because I saw that it's won the "Best Toy of the Year" award in the past.  Too bad the next day it ran out of batteries.  If you can only imagine how upset Jace got about that, it was like his "not fast enough" breakfast times 100... ;)

Best toy ever?

Watching "Horton Hears a Who"