Wetlands Institute Part 2

Walking the trail in the wetlands. This trail was neat! We had a book and some papers that told all about the wetlands. You could also dial a number on a cell phone and listen to a recording. Travis started with the cell phone but quickly asked not to do it because he likes to gain his knowledge by reading and seeing not by using the phone (I think if my family reads this they might question if Travis really is my son because everyone knows most of what I learned about in school was learned when I was on the phone. I had a phone glued to my ear from age 13-20+). LOL!

Here is Travis and Demi 0observing some of the wetlands.


Daddy-O teaching Travis.Remember me saying about the phone number you could call on the cell phone? Well, before Travis turned off the phone a man walked past us and said to me "That man on that phone has a wonderful voice". Once he said that I noticed the voice on the phone was the same voice the man had who was talking to me. He is a marine biologist who works at the Institute. He is a very nice man. We learned a lot from him. In picture below he is the man on the left.
He was checking the nets (something they put over the turtle nests to keep them from running off and getting killed. Here is a baby one we found that wasn't in a net. We asked why he wasn't in a net and the kind man explained that they don't always find all the places that have eggs (I guess sometimes a mama turtle lays eggs and nobody sees it).


Travis liked walking in all the water (yuck, he is such a boy).

Wondering what Zee did all vacation? She relaxed (maybe a bit too much). Here she is sleeping again.

I love the picture below of Poppy and Demi.

Travis got into learning about everything in the wetlands (he is such a good student).
Rob and Travis walked out on the boardwalk and spent a long time shooting the breeze and asking questions about wetlands with the kind man (I wish I could remember his name).
A picture of another baby found on the walk (this one was found in a protected net)



We saw a lot of cool things on our walk. I am short on time so I will have to finish up our wetlands trip tomorrow.

wetlands Institute Part one

This place was awesome!!! It started out on the wrong foot (one of the children was a bit bold with us when we first arrived). After we worked that out we all got to enjoy it.
Here is Travis climbing up to the lookout.
View of some of the wetlands.
My talented hubby took the next three pics.

Demi was a bit ahead having fun with Mum Mum and Poppy. The rest of us went into to learn about the terrapins.
Here is Travis observing and learning about terrapins.


Below is the moment things took a turn for the worst! Sometimes I wish my son didn't always NEED to read and learn about EVERYTHING! I know it is a gift he has but it is sometimes a curse. He is only 9 and has a very big heart.
At the moment I snapped this picture I realized something was very wrong with our son!
A second after that picture snapped he turned around with tears in his eyes and was having a hard time speaking. He was so shook up over this! The wall gives lots of info on how they are now endangered animals and how many are killed by being run over by cars. He just kept chanting to me "This shouldn't happen Mom it just shouldn't happen". I wanted to take his hurt away and make things all better but I didn't know how to fix the problem with the endangered turtles. I could see my son was seconds away from falling apart so bad that he wouldn't be able to get himself back together to enjoy the rest of the day (he was ready to fall apart emotionally in the same way I did when I would have a fight with a boyfriend when I was a teenager). I noticed a terrapin donation bank on the end of a counter with his mouth open for the donations and I quickly offered Travis money to help the save the turtles.

I only had about $4.00 in change and I was already counting up dollar bills trying to measure the amount of money that it would take to make my son feel better when my hubby noticed something was wrong. Travis explained to Rob about how the endangered terrapins can become extinct because of cars killing them. Then Rob didn't know what to do. I noticed we all had tear filled eyes very sad for the turtles and for our son. My brilliant hubby picked up his head, raised a finger in the air, and gave a wink (his sign for I have a solution). He ran off and came back with a paper on adopting a terrapin. He asked me if it was OK. I of course was thrilled to know he might be able to save the day. Rob hugged Travis and gave him the paper. He asked Travis if it was something he might want to do (of course Travis was thrilled to be able to help a turtle). Rob and Travis walked off to the main building and left me with Zee (who was sleeping in a stroller). They returned both with big smiles and very happy to go back in the turtle building to read a bit more about them. Rob said that when the turtle was big enough they would let Travis know so he can come to release it into the wild. I am not sure if we will be able to make the trip back out to Cape May but I think that is nice that people can go up to see the turtles they adopt be set free.




I have so many pics on this post I will need to wait until tomorrow to finish up our visit at the wetlands institute.

Gilligan's Island

I have already shared this with my family and facebook friends. I know I have lots of friends and family who haven't seen this so I thought I should post it here. The children and I made this video up the other day. I thought I was done with vacation posts but it looks like I have one or two more to finish up. I need to share our trip to the wetlands and my daughters birthday because they are both so much more fun that what we have been doing over the last week now that we are back home. In another couple days my blog will return to our old routine.

RIDES!

Here are the 3 best pix of our trip (bought them at the souvenir stand and well worth the $6.25 a picture).
First picture is Rob and his Dad riding the Canyon Falls Log Flume. Please notice how calm and cool Poppy looks. Then notice how scared Rob looks!



Next up is Rob and Demi. Rob still looks scared. Poor Demi looks as if her eyes are going to pop out of her head.
By Rob's third trip down he knew I was buying pictures of his rides down the flume. You can see he is trying hard to show a face of a person having fun (no fear showing on his face this time). Poor Travis looks very scared!


Pictures of your family looking scared to death....
PRICELESS!!!!!