Gators With The Goodmons

 On the fourth day of our trip, we met up with our long time friends the Goodmons.  We have so much fun when we get together and it has been so great to see our families grow over the past 10 years.  It is also interesting to see the 9 of us bust through an establishment and take over.  What better place to crash than the Alligator Farm?  That way if one of the kids act up, we can just throw them in the pit...just kidding ;)  The kids were great.  And besides the smell, the gator zoo was a pretty cool experience.

   Em loves animals and alligators are no exception. 

Whenever we dress her in UF gear she calls it "putting her gators on."

Here she is checking out an albino gator.

 It might be tough to see in the pictures, but there were gators all over the place!  I'm talking hundreds.

They were laying in the sun,

 swimming in the pond, waiting for some poor soul to fall off the bridge,

(again, kidding...food pellets were provided)

and surprisingly mobile.

This is Maximo.  He was the largest gator on the farm.  He also smiles for pictures.

 

They had more than just alligators in this zoo.  There were other reptiles, monkeys and birds too.  Interesting fact: David has a LOT of weird bird knowledge.  He can name pretty much any exotic bird species down to the specifics.

For dinner, we went to old down town St. Augustine.  This is supposed to be a pic of Em and me in front of a beautiful sunset over the Bridge of Lions.  Hmm...the camera didn't quite capture that.  We really need to get a good one.

We provided a fair amount of entertainment for the surrounding customers in the restaurant.  The kids were actually well behaved.  It is just overwhelming when they out number the adults.  If anything, it helped reaffirm David's and my decision to stop at two.

The best part of the night was when Evan (2yrs) was crawling around under the table and ended up getting stuck under a chair.  He wasn't making a sound...just laying there face planted on the floor with every limb completely jammed within the legs of this chair.  His older brother alerted us to the situation right around the time a waitress came by to ask if the kid was ok.  "Oh yeah, he's just playin" said Scott.  I don't think I could have laughed harder.  We had to lay the chair over on it's side to free him because when David lifted it in the air, Evan stuck to it.  I'm only sorry that this picture didn't turn out better.

The next morning, the guys ran the what they said was "the coldest race they have ever done"...the Jacksonville Half Marathon.  It was about 25 degrees that morning and the wind was really blowing...especially during the 2 miles of the course that ran along the beach.  Congrats to the guys for enduring the weather and finishing with some really great times.

Stay tuned. 

More to come....