Adventures With Alligators

Welcome back to Taylor Talks!

Today was Part 2 of the big cousin sleepover, and we enjoyed a wonderful day of making memories together in the new state that we call home.

The kids were just as excited today as they were yesterday. In fact, the excitement started at about 6:00am when the four littlest girls woke up. Though they stayed in the twins' bedroom and played behind a closed door, the boys still woke up an hour later. It's amazing to me how kids can get up so early, no matter how late they went to bed the night before. I, on the other hand, found it pretty difficult to get up at 8:30am after going to bed at midnight... you'd think that eight and a half hours would be plenty, but I'm already looking forward to taking a nap while the kids are at school tomorrow!

​Even though we had an early morning, the day turned out going very well and we all kept ourselves awake enough to have a lot of fun. The kids played in the house and out on the lanai until it was time to go out in early afternoon. We went to this place not too far from our house that we've passed a million times but never gone to before. It's a mini golf place that also has an arcade, laser maze, and baby alligators.

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We didn't do any mini golf, because we thought the kids were just too wound up to be trusted with golf clubs (you never know about those crazy kids ha ha)! Instead, we took turns doing this laser maze, and I couldn't believe that I actually went through it myself. It was basically a room that had all of these light beams being reflected to look like laser beams. You had to maneuver your way over and under the lights and reach the opposite side of the room without bumping into any of the beams. Surprisingly, I only hit into two of the beams during a really difficult maze. I actually thought that I was going to be doing the easy level, but my cousin decided that he was going to mess around with me and put the maze on random mode... the light beams kept turning on and off in different directions as I tried to make my way through the maze!

After a pit stop in the arcade, we got to feed the baby alligators. You put little pieces of hot dog on the end of a fishing pole type of stick and dangled it off of a little bridge that went over an alligator pond. There were over thirty baby alligators ranging from teeny tiny to about a foot long. The kids were so excited whenever an alligator would chomp down on a hot dog, although most of them were too full to eat a lot.

But the best part of the day was when we got to hold a baby alligator! I've been wanting to do this since we first saw a sign for this place back in August. It was really amazing and totally worth the wait. The baby alligator was so small and cute, and it was hard to imagine how big it would one day become. What was really surprising was that the alligator was much softer than I expected him to be. I expected hard, rough scales, but instead his belly was soft and even the scales on his back were not too rough. Everyone had a chance to hold the little guy and take a picture with him. My mom asked if he had a name, and the employee who was helping us told us that we could name him if we wanted to. We let my cousin pick something, and he came up with the name, "Stinger." He was pretty happy with having that honor.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend, and it was so great to have our cousins here for a visit. It was definitely exhausting having so many little kids running around together, but I can't wait to do it again!

Thank you so much for your continued support! I look forward to sharing more stories about my experience with foster care, and hopefully hearing from readers who have questions or similar stories to share. I'm always willing to answer questions and hear about other experiences! Please don't forget to like and share my Facebook author page as well!

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Thanks!
Taylor

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