All along the water, baby

For once I haven't been posting because we've been having all sorts of fun adventures, so let me give some updates.

Earlier this week, we went to Bee City, an exotic animal farm and apiary about an hour from here. On the one hand, the trip was great: lemurs ate cheerios out of Baby J's hands; there were wallabies, cavies, assorted monkeys, alpaca, llamas, foxes, and ferrets (mysteriously either hiding or escaped), not to mention assorted donkeys, shetland ponies, goats, turkeys, chickens, ducks, koi, goldfish, pheasants, turtles, snakes, and, of course, bees; many of our friends joined us (or we joined them) for the adventure; and we ate some good road side food in their little cafe (cheeseburgers, grilled cheese, and South Carolina bbq--yum!). On the other hand, the bees of Bee City were disappointing, with only one glass hive to inspect and not a lot of educational materials in evidence; the animals' pens were extremely muddy, making us wonder if the owners had permits for all these creatures; and even though they host school groups, the owner was extremely nervous about the 15 or so kids we had with us, ranging in age from a year to 13, which was alarming for everyone involved. It was a fun trip, not something we'll do again but worth one trip.

Later on (that same day, actually, because we're so cool), we went to watch the Charleston Battery play, our local semi-pro (?) soccer team. The stadium is on Daniel Island, a chic resort island with a manufactured downtown that is only semi-populated, as is the island as a whole. It's an odd scenario; makes you think you're in some sort of Twilight Zone episode. But the stadium itself is very nice, intimate, you're right on top of the field. Not that I really care all that much about soccer. I spent most of the night talking to friends and, after a few minutes of interest, J spent the rest of the night running all over the bleachers. But we all had fun and ended the evening exhausted.

The rest of the week, J and I have been crowning ourselves king and queen of the water park. J loves the fountain features best of all, tolerates the lazy river about twice per visit to humor his mommy, is fearless about walking right up to and into the water regardless of depth, and wants, in theory, to go down the water slides but wasn't able to until when we went recently with his beloved friend Becca. He was all smiles going down both the open and closed slides like a big boy. The lifeguard declared him "a natural." (The lifeguard also said he never measured to see if children were above the 30" height minimum--J was, of course--saying "if they want to go down and they can walk, I just let them go." Perhaps someone should let Brock the lifeguard know there is no direct correlation between walking and swimming abilities...)

Tune in next time for more thrilling exploits! OMG, it's so exciting!