Daddy Is Proud of His Little Girl

What has Daddy been teaching his little girl!? Well, armpit farting of course! And she is catching on very quickly.

Flat Ginny Goes to Florida

This year one of the Neumann family vacations was to Lutz, Florida to visit some family members who live there. And Flat Ginny went along of course. The drive down to Florida was a long one and Flat Ginny seemed to do the best of all of us. She never got hungry and never needed a bathroom break.

On the way down to Florida we passed a place called Dinosaur World. It looked like a really cool place, but we were in a hurry so we didn't go in. We did get a picture of the kids outside the place with a promise that we would try to stop on our way back to Chicago.

We made it to safely to Florida! One of the first days we were there we went to the beach. The one we picked was on Caladesi Island. Here is a picture of the kids posing with Flat Ginny near where we boarded the ferry. On the ferry ride over to the island we saw some dolphins enjoying themselves. This is the first time any of us have seen dolphins in the wild. We were all very excited.

Here is Mommy posing with Flat Ginny with, I think, St. Petersburg in the distance. Flat Ginny really seemed to enjoy the beach. Speaking of the beach, it was much sunnier there than we Northerners are used to. The kids got slight sunburns right through their "swimmy" shirts. It's a good thing that Mommy lathered them up with SPF 50 sunblock.

The day after the beach Daddy and Flat Ginny went bird watching. Here they are posing in front of the Weekiwachee Preserve sign. The Weekiwachee Preserve is a very large nature area that I'm told used to be a strip mining operation that was left to go natural when it was shut down.

We walked a LONG way around this preserve but we saw quite a few birds, with the highlight being an Osprey nest. Below is a photo I took of an Eastern Bluebird that was nesting in the preserve.

The last day we were in Florida we went to the Tampa Zoo. It's is a nice little zoo that has some animals that zoos in Chicago do not have, specifically Manatees. The kids thought they were cool, but I think they liked feeding the birds the most.

At one point we rode the roller coaster there and the kids got a little freaked out. The roller coaster was not especially scarey but neither of them have ever been on a roller coaster before. But, it was great fun.

Flat Ginny had a great time, too. But she didn't want to feed the birds. She was worried that she would wind up being part of a nest somewhere. We didn't blame her.

It was a very hot day so we all sort of pooped out before we saw the whole zoo. Oh well, we saw those things we decided we wanted to see there.

The next day we left Florida, even though we got a late start. I think we left something like 3:00 in the afternoon. We drove all day and eventually stopped somewhere near Chattanooga. We slept like big dogs, got back in the car the next morning and headed toward Dinosaur World.

Dinosaur World is a really cool place. They have scattered throughout the surrounding woods life-sized replicas of various dinosaurs. There is a self-guided tour that is very fun because around each corner is a new and sometimes even larger set of animals to gauk at.

Some of the replicas are struly huge, as can be seen in the picture above.

And some of the replicas are not limited to the dinosaur ear of history. There was a wooly mammoth "garden" with about 10 or so very large replicas and one smaller one that the kids could climb on.

Unfortunately, the trip ended tragically with Flat Ginny being eaten by a dinosaur. Just kidding!

She, and the rest of us, had a great time on our journey. We're looking forward to some more trips this summer. Mt. Rushmore anyone?