Arizona Sting Rays & Butterflies

While we were in Arizona, Chris had to fly back to Seattle for a business meeting so Grandpa and Grandma Faiola treated us all to a day at the Butterfly Sanctuary. It was such a fun experience. The kids got to touch the stingrays (!). Lily showed zero fear and just plunged her hand in to touch the stingrays. Jamisen was a bit more reticent to touch them though. He was excited and interested in them though.

The butterfly sanctuary had this amazing huge humid butterfly play area where you could go in and look at all the butterflies and if you were lucky, get the butterflies to land on you. Everyone in the family had multiple butterflies land on them. 

 

I got super lucky and had five butterflies at one time - probably because of the yellow pants. =) 

 

We were at the pool in the awesome Marriot resort almost every day by 8 a.m. One day, we literally showed up at the pool at 7:30 a.m. (!!!). The kids LOVED the water play so much. They were both in life jackets the entire time after Lily tried to drown herself in 18" of water.

 

There were 5 different pools that we could visit on any given day. One of the pools, pictured above, is a little kiddie pool that gets no deeper than 18" It's perfect for babies and non-swimming toddlers. I didn't make Lily put on her life jacket just once and within 5 minutes, she had fallen down, underwater. Judging by her flailing and panicked underwater look, there was no way she would have found her footing without help. She was fine after a couple scared wails. After that, it was pretty much life jacket all the time.

 

See? Life jacket! We packed four different life jackets in our suitcase. We weren't sure which ones the kids would like the best. They both liked the jacket-type ones the best.

Jamisen got a little bored with the kiddie pool after a few days and was ready for the 'harder' stuff. He excelled and got much more comfortable with swimming just in those few days. We really need to get them both into swimming classes at some point.

Baby Alise jjoined us for a few days and loved the water too. She especially loved being propelled around the pool in the warm water and naturally kicked her legs and arms like a pro. Lily is demonstrating how to use the little inner tube life jacket. Since it wasn't her favorite one, she's probably trying to talk Alise into buying it, Tom Sawyer like.

I often start my mornings out telling Jamisen that today will be the 'best day ever!' The other morning, I said that to him and then went straight into, "Is there anything you're thankful for today?" He crossed his arms and said defiantly, "No, I'm not thankful for anything and today will NOT be the best day ever!" Given that he generally is a happy positive little tyke, this is a story I want to remember for when he is 25 years old and greeting me on the phone (when he calls me every day just to say 'hi' of course) with "Good Morning Mom! It's the best day ever!" =)