The Everglades

We got some delivery Chinese food and stayed in to get a good

night of sleep and await the arrival of Julie, Dave and the kids, but Oscar has to go to bed before they get there and he doesn’t like that at all.  All day, he keeps asking if every plane that we see is their plane coming in to land.  We’re trying to explain to him how this 

 whole travel thing works, but it’s not getting through to him.  It’s a good thing that he goes to sleep without them here though, because between the interstate being closed (which seems to be an epidemic in Florida), the flight being late, various other things that go wrong on a given

 travel day, they slog in to the Air B n B at 12:30am.  It’s great to see them, but they look like they might die if they can’t change their flights to something out of Miami or Fort Lauderdale.  My only concern is making sure that Oscar stays quiet in the morning because they’re going to be exhausted and he will be superexcited that they’re here.  We have a late start  and then head out for our tour of the Everglades.  All of us fit in the minivan that Schillims got, because it’s the same minivan that the Pittmans have.  So, John is able to put in the jumpseat in the middle since we had just seen it done in Georgia.  Once we get there,

  we have a problem with the tickets because Oscar should have been free, but the online buying didn’t allow for that.  We get the extra ticket and then are told when we get on the boat that they should have gotten store credit for it.  Oscar has to wear a life jacket and headphones instead of the ear plugs the rest of us get and he puts them on without any fuss.  We 

see several alligators hanging out near the entrance because they don’t care about the airboats anymore.  We have a tour of the Everglades and then the animal show which is fun.  Oscar gets to ask his question about alligators liking marshmallows and the tour guide points out that is now illegal to give them marshmallows because that used to be how they got the alligators to come out for tourists before the National

 Parks service took over the Everglades.  Who knew?  I thought that it was a silly question from a 4 year old and it’s a legal issue now.  At the end of the show, you get the chance the to hold an alligator and Oscar is all in.  The little girl in front of him does it on her own and he wants to hold it

  on his own, but daddy does have a hand on it with him.  He is super stoked, because he has looked forward to alligators this whole trip.  We hit a place for lunch called Crepe Connection Café and have a lot of crepes (mine has wayyyyy too many onions which haunts me the rest of the night) and then drive

 down Calle Ocho all the way back to Little Havana and pass through the things we had walked past.  We spend the rest of the night in and resting with watching clips of Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast and getting gourmet pizza from Tutto that delivered.  The prosciutto pizza was delicious, but we did the math and realized that this day in a cheaper than a hotel Air B n B, lunch, trip to the Everglades and dinner has cost us about $600 for our families.  It makes it clear that the cruise is the cheapest way for us to go by far.  We’ll all looking forward to getting on the boat tomorrow.