Busch Gardens December 2009

Sigh. Here we are in the middle of winter again. I am definitely suffering from a February funk. It's not the cold that's bothering me as much as the fact that we have to wait four whole months to see any friends or family that will be visiting us. Elise and Linnaea are not bothered by the winter at all. They absolutely love going to the child center, and I have to admit it keeps me quite busy, too. But lately I've been reminiscing about our nice Florida vacation, so I thought I'd put up some photos that I had sorted through. I have already posted most of these on Facebook because I was getting errors when I tried to get them on the blog back in December.

So while we were there we got to go on a trip to Busch Gardens and it was so much fun. The girls loved riding on the train around the park and going on the skyride over all the animals. They also have this area designed specifically for little kids with an airbounce, treehouse, mini carousel, and other mini rides. They do have a few splash parks, but it was so cold when we were there! We were quite disappointed in the weather, but highly recommend Busch Gardens for any families with young children. Of course, they also have the monster roller coasters for adults. Thanks to grandma and grandpa's babysitting service, Kevin and I were able to go a day by ourselves. We went on all the scary ones, most notably the Sheikra. Wow, talk about a thrill ride. It's the one that takes you up like 10 stories then dangles you over the edge of the drop for about 5 seconds before you plummet straight down. That was the last time I'll go on that one! On this trip I decided that I am not a roller coaster person any more. Which is fine by me. We were very fortunate that the park was nearly empty the day we went, so Kevin got to go on the coasters over and over again while I sat and watched the entertainment.





Linnaea admires the alligator's mouth. She's got an obsession with knowing what things bite. Every book we read or photo of something we look at, she always has to ask,"Does it bite?" Not in a scared way, just in a I-just-want-to-know way.





Elise looks for hippos.





Linnaea crawls on the lion.





Elise sits on a gorilla, the infamous one near the entrance of the park.





We all go on the big carousel.





Linnaea bonds with an orangutan.





Elise inspects the orangutan's fingernails.





Elise cuddles the hippos.





"Ah, help me!"





We meet the stilt walkers in Jungala.





Elise was a bit terrified at first but then had a great time.





We go across one of the treehouse bridges.





Elise and grandma ride in a dragon.





On the train going around the park.





Daddy and the girls ride in the dinosaur egg.