Alabama part 2

This week has been crazy.  I was out of town for the two weeks before school started.  Then Madi broke her arm, school started, I got a sinus infection, and the whole first week of school ended up in chaos.  

I'm regrouping now.  Trying to get caught up.  I registered to vote today!  So that's good.  Slowly checking things off my list.  Jax man starts school tomorrow, so that will definitely free up a little bit of time.  At the rate I'm going I'll be posting about Jaxon's first day of preschool around Halloween.  So stay tuned :)

Anyway, back to our Alabama trip.  That we've been home from for two weeks, although now it feels like an eternity.

I had this great idea that we would take family pictures on the beach and then be done with that for the year.  Unfortunately the light wasn't super great and they all turned out kind of blurry.  Plus, I forgot how windy it is on the beach and my hair looks awful in all of them, which I know is kind of self-centered of me, but whatever, it's still true.  

Here are a couple of decent ones that we got: 

Then it all turned into craziness and the boys ended up sword-fighting in the surf.  Maybe I'll just put this on my Christmas card.  It's much more realistic.

We definitely ate some yummy food, but we were disappointed that we didn't get to try alligator.  There are swamps and alligators everywhere down there and some of the restaurants serve gator bites.  Unfortunately the one we went to was out. It's too many meals like these that will see me at the gym a lot the next few weeks before we go to Utah for my brother's wedding, but it's so worth it!!

Madi got to sleep in the bunk bed closet with her friend Ryan.  Which she loved!

We also went to an alligator farm.  Which is pretty crazy.  They had over 200 full-grown alligators living in their "farm" which is really a swamp.  We're trying to act scared!

These 3 kids would be a tasty treat for any alligator.

The kids also got to hold a baby alligator, which was pretty cool.

Obviously they enjoyed it.

This is the feeding show.  Look at the size of that guy!  And he wasn't even close to being the biggest alligator.  I was glad we were on the other side of that fence!

The town that we were staying in is called Fort Morgan, Alabama.  It's on a peninsula that sticks out into the eastern side of Mobile Bay.  It's named after a Civil War fort that is on the end of that peninsula.  We had a fun time touring the fort.  The architecture was really cool. 

This is overlooking the bay.

Jaxon liked all the cannons and all the rooms where the swords were kept. (Although I have no idea if there were swords there.  He was just being a punk that day, so I told him there were sword rooms to make him happy.)

All the kids overlooking the inside of the fort.

Entrance to Fort Morgan.

Finally, here's a picture of the kids making s'mores by the beach.  Despite all our extra fun activities, the kids' favorite thing to do was still swim in the pool, play in the ocean, and dig in the sand!