Florida trip day 1: Butterfly World

I want to write about our Florida trip before I forget the details.  I already wrote about how we surprised the boys-- they knew nothing about the trip until we actually got on the plane.
The first day there, we drove down the turnpike from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale.  It was drizzly and cloudy, but the rain stopped by the time we got to Coconut Creek and our first destination-- Butterfly World!  This was one of our favorite places to go when we lived in Florida.  The boys and I went a bunch of times, and they all remembered it.  It was so funny remembering the first time we went, and comparing it to now, 6 years later.  I have some "before and after" pictures.
I didn't get exactly the same angle, but it is the same place in the aviary:

 Mosey has a lot more hair now than he did then!  :-)

 Mosey was NOT a fan of the Lorikeets the first time we went to Butterfly World when he was 11 months old.  I was holding him, and a couple of them came and landed on my head (they were obsessed with my long hair), and he totally freaked out. 
6 years later, however, he couldn't get enough of them.  And they couldn't get enough of him!!

Happy face!

Very, very sad face.  :-)

 Here are a couple of before and afters of Brigham and Joseph (and Moses).

Brigham and Joseph still look like those cute little 3 year olds, don't they?  Joseph was a fearless animal lover even then.  Here they are now (plus an added brother, who wasn't walking let alone holding lorikeets before!):

Here are the rest of the Lorikeet pictures.

No, it didn't poop on my head, but I was worried about it.

Here is a "before" of me, 6 years ago.  I am just about too vain to post this picture.  Here I am looking quite postpartum, I think literally 2 days after I started Weight Watchers, with 50 lbs to lose and no makeup on.  Do I look frazzled?  Well, with 3 kids 3 and under, I pretty much was frazzled all the time.  Still, I'd love to go back in time and relive some of it.

Cool looking birds, eh?  They're not at all native to Florida, but, what the heck!

Here are another set of before and after photos-- in the mist tunnel in the butterfly aviary:

Before.  They thought this mist tunnel was the funnest thing EVER.

And after.  They still thought it was cool, but they were a little more subdued about it.  :-)

And here are a couple of before and afters of Brigham.  OK, so I guess he doesn't look *exactly* the same as when he was 3.  :-)

I don't have an "after" picture of Joseph in the butterfly aviary, but here's one outside, looking at the macaws.  I have no idea what that expression means.  :-)

And my final "before and after" pictures.  Not on the same bench, darn it, and only 1 of the boys is actually in both pictures, but you get the idea.  Mostly I just like looking at those old pictures when the twins were itty bitty.  :-)

What else did we do there?

We walked across the swinging bridge (in case you can't tell, this is "before." :-)  Joseph and Brigham had already run across it before I could get them to stop and take an "after" picture).

We walked through the passion flower vine pathway.

We walked through the bug museum and goggled at the emperor scorpions and black widow spiders and brown recluses and giant millipedes and hissing cockroaches and the black and yellow orb-weaver that was still in the corner, uncaged, sitting on the huge web that it spun across a couple of dead branches set up against the wall.

We saw lots of butterflies.  My absolute favorite are brown and kind of drab with their wings closed, but when they open them, they are a bright, iridescent, peacock blue.  I tried to get a picture of one with the wings open, but they mostly only have them open when they're flying.  I did get picture of this one, clinging to the screen of the enclosure.  But the light streaming through its wings made the blue nearly transparent.  Still pretty, though.

This one came and sat on my hand looking at me for quite a while.  Hello, there!

And of course lots of birds.  This macaw area was new since we were here last.  They had a veritable conversation with Joseph who stood there for 5 minutes or so squawking back and forth with them.  :-)

 

And silly boys:

We stayed until closing, and of course had to go through the gift shop (the boys love gift shops), but they restrained themselves and didn't actually buy anything there!  Ben and I did, though.  It's a great place to buy presents.

We drove on down through Ft. Lauderdale, and to Plantation where we stayed in the EXACT same hotel we stayed at for 6 weeks or so when we first moved to Florida, before we closed on our house.  The Staybridge Suites on Pine Island Rd., just north of Broward Blvd.  Talk about deja vu!  We didn't stay in the same room, though.  Actually we got a great deal because hotels.com messed up and booked a room they didn't have, so they upgraded us to a really nice 2 bedroom 2 bathroom suite for no extra charge.  They still have "sun downers" and served a light dinner in the lobby.  It sure was easier to wrangle 2 nine year olds and a 6 year old than it was 2 two year olds and a 6 month old!!