Day 4-Fort Lauderdale, Florida

We had so much fun on Monday doing a couple of activities around Fort Lauderdale. Our first activity was a snorkeling trip on a glass-bottom boat. It was a beautiful day! 81 degrees, sunny, and calm-a perfect day out on the ocean! We rode for about 30-40 minutes out through the bay/harbor into the ocean to the spot where we stopped to snorkel. If you look closely, you can see the fish in the water by Calvin and Camden. We all got out into the ocean to swim, snorkel, and see the fish. Camden had his lifejacket and noodle and Calvin just held onto him while we were out in the water. It was so much fun!

The boat had these areas where you could look down into the water and see the fish swimming below the boat.

After about half an hour, Camden was getting a little cold, so we brought him back onto the boat and took turns snorkeling for our last half hour.

I had so much fun snorkeling! I think it was my favorite part of the trip.

We saw so many beautiful boats!

There were some HUGE boats.

And so many amazing houses.

Camden fell asleep on the way back. He was really tired after all the swimming! And when he woke up, he was very hungry! It was so cute. He said, Dad, I'm hungry! When we asked him what he wanted, he said he wanted a hamburger. We were so surprised at how much he ate! Usually he is more interested in fries or an ice cream cone, but he was a hungry little boy.

Our second activity was an airboat tour in the Everglades!

We saw some real, live, wild, alligators. Can you spot the animals in the following pictures?

Alligator....

Bird...

Turtles...

Baby alligators...this is probably the hardest one. Look to the left of the lily pads right near where the water turns to land and you may see some little stripes, that's the baby alligator.

Here's a video of part of the ride.

After the airboat ride, we got to see some of the alligators they had there.

We also got to watch this "wildlife show." This guy was hilarious. Here he is holding a baby alligator.

A little bigger...

And even bigger! He actually stuck his hand inside this alligators mouth! He showed us how he could put his hand inside the open mouth and the alligator wouldn't bite down if he didn't touch anything. But then when he put a pen inside and tapped the alligators mouth, it chomped down so hard and fast! It was crazy!

At the end of the show, we donated $3 and got to hold this live alligator!

It was such a fun day! I loved everything we did and had so much fun just being with Camden and Calvin.

Spring Break Day 2-Savannah, Georgia

On our second day, we drove to Savannah, Georgia. We went to the train museum and history museum in Savannah. Camden really enjoyed seeing all of the trains and taking a ride on one!

Here we are up in a caboose!

We were sitting up in that top part with the windows.

This is an old bridge from the 1800's used to bring the trains into Savannah.

They converted the old passenger station into the history museum.

That's all for our stop in Savannah! That evening, we drove down to Valdosta, Georgia and visited Calvin's sister and her husband. We went to church with them the next morning, then on Sunday, we drove down the western side of Florida, then crossed over through the Everglades to Fort Lauderdale and checked into the hotel we would be staying in for the next 3 nights. That takes care of days 2 & 3! Next post will be day 4!

Spring Break Day 1-Columbia, South Carolina

We had such a fun time on our spring break trip! We left on Friday and headed for Columbia, South Carolina. We took a small highway most of the way there instead of taking the freeway. It was so nice to be out of the city and off the beaten path a little bit. We were able to see some beautiful green fields and some open spaces. On our way, we saw a huge orchard and they had a sign for their farm store. In the store, they had all kinds of ciders, jams, produce, etc. I was wishing it was a few months later and we could get some fresh peaches! There was also a small "museum" with quite a collection of tractors and other things.

Camden had fun trying out all the different trucks and tractors.

Two of our favorite shows right now are on the history channel, American Pickers (two guys who travel around and look through peoples' barns to find antiques and things) and Pawn Stars (a pawn shop in Las Vegas, they show people bringing in all kinds of antiques and they figure out if they are real or fake and then sometimes have things restored). We felt like we were right in one of the episodes with all of these antiques and things that we've seen on the shows!

This is a visible gas pump, you could see exactly how much gas you were getting-yes, we learned that on American Pickers :)

We took Camden to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. He had so much fun running from exhibit to exhibit to see all of the different animals. His favorites were the lions and the bears.

The kangaroo exhibit was really cool, you could walk right into the exhibit to see the kangaroos.

Camden enjoyed posing with all of the different animal statues.

They also had a farmyard area where we fed some goats and milked a cow!

At the end of the night, we checked into our hotel then went to get some dinner. There was a guy at the restaurant making balloons into anything kids asked for! Here is Camden's dinosaur hat.

Check back soon for Day #2!