Pirate's Cove's Diving Boards

On Friday, I took the kids to Pirate's Cove. This is a very small water park but we enjoy it. We went last year and two years ago. I used a coupon from the Entertainment Book for buy admission get one free so it only cost us $13.
Josiah loved everything about Pirate's Cove.

He is such a happy baby.

He sat in a little chair with Wesley to eat lunch and snack. Of course, he tried to get away several times.

This year, we tried the sand area for the first time. Of course, the kids loved it.

Our neighbor Parker could've stayed on this digger alll day.

Josiah has started to practice standing by himself.

He loved playing in the sand.

Wesley wanted to jump off the diving boards. He could've done this all day.

Lydia also wanted to jump off the diving boards. I was thrilled! This was her first time jumping off the diving board without me in the water to help her. A few weeks ago, she tried the diving board for the first time without a floatation device with me in the water to help her. After she landed in the water, I grabbed her and gave her a little help to get to the side. But, yesterday she did all by herself. Over and over again. Her preferred method of getting to the side in dogging paddling.
Pirate's Cove was not crowded at all on Friday. The kids didn't have to wait in lines for the slides or the diving boards. My kids and I had to leave after four and a half hours because we had another event that evening. We were all tired from the wonderful day.

Please Touch

On Saturday, we used our super duper membership to get into the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia for free. That saved us $60. We did have to pay $8 to park and the carousel was $3 per child. We also ate lunch in the Please Taste Cafe. Surprisingly, the food was reasonably priced.
We started out in the water play area and then Wesley and Lydia played on the big keyboard.

Josiah found a piano that was his size. He is such a happy baby.

After looking at each and every option on the carousel, Lydia finally chose a rabbit.

Wesley chose a goat.

Josiah really liked the carousel but he seemed to get tired before the ride was over.

Lydia pretended to cook in Wonderland.

Sometimes she is quite contrary.

This cute little boat, that went up and down, was in one of the special areas for kids three and under. It provided a nice challenge for Josiah's balance.

At 11:00 we saw a magic show. The kids got to pet the rabbit after the show. Wesley is still wondering how the magician made the rabbit appear.

Lydia and Wesley both enjoyed the grocery store.

This cute baby really had a good time at the museum.

Wesley asked Chris, "What is this?"

Wesley got to use the scope to pick up balls.

Lydia had a turn, too.

Josiah complained when I picked him up from this car.

This was a cute little model car wash.

Lydia was very serious about pumping the gas.

Here she is "driving" the Scion.

We need one of these hampster wheels at home!

Chris and Josiah on a space shuttle.

Lydia and Wesley loved launching the foam rockets.

Josiah had fun pushing buttons on the control panel.

This is something we probably wouldn't try at home - painting bubble wrap.

The Play Foam is pretty cool. So cool, that we went by the gift shop to buy some to take home.
After 4 1/2 hours, we were ready to leave. We took a short drive to zoo where we spent two hours. It was a super fun day!

Our Third Zoo in Two Weeks

And we all really liked this one. We got in for half-price. We only spent two hours here but we were able to rush through and see almost everything. (I will do another post about where we spent most of the day.)

Lydia wanted to see Cheetahs. Yes, they are still animals locked in zoos but the habitats here looked a lot nicer. We saw three giraffes. Here is a mom and baby. The Philadelphia Zoo has a lot of peacocks. The zebras and rhino were separated by "removable posts...so they can safely get know one another" . The zookeepers hope to one day be able to remove the posts so the zebras and rhino can live together. I am sure the zebras are just fine with those posts not being removed. The zoo has two polar bears. This one was having a snack. Josiah loved looking at the animals. He needs a hair cut but I just don't want to get it cut yet. The Avian Center had a lot of pretty birds like this one. This bird had gotten outside of his exhibit but a zookeeper was able to easily get him back where he belonged. Happy Father's Day to a wonderful dad and husband. As we were walking out of the zoo, Wesley suddenly said, "I have to sit down for a minute." I asked him, "Do you have something in your shoe?" He said, "No, my legs are just really tired." The zoo was our second big event of the day. As we walked back to the car, both kids were complaining about how tired they were. Chris carried both of them briefly. At first I was thinking that it was a lot less walking than Disney World and that they shouldn't be so tired. But they had played all day and only sat down a couple of times. You can tell this photo was taken with my phone.
The kids all fell asleep on the ride home. Lydia woke up long enough to go potty but then crawled in bed in her clothes minus her skirt which she took off to go potty. She came in our room about 5 AM this morning and said, "My bottoms fell off." (Just typing that makes me laugh all over again.) Chris told her that she just went to sleep without her pajamas on and that she should go back to bed. Amazingly, she just went back to bed for another few hours.

Animals in Cages

This is probably my first negative review of place we have visited. I usually like everywhere we take the kids but I did not like Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo. Wesley and Lydia liked it though. We got in for half price thanks to a gift membership from one of Chris' brothers and his wife. So far we have gotten in free to two children's museums and one science museum. We love this membership.

When we paid for our 1/2 price tickets, we asked about the safari ride since the times where posted right there. The employees told us that Josiah couldn't go because everyone has to be over 36" to go on the bumpy ride and the safari last one hour. What they didn't tell us was that it is an extra fee. We heard an announcement about going to the main gate to get tickets. Well, it was $15 for adults and $10 for children. We weren't paying an additional $35 for Chris or me to go with Lydia and Wesley on the safari since we had just paid $26 to get into the zoo. Yes, we could have found this out from their website, but we didn't do that much research for our visit. We were thinking the safari ride was like the one at Reston Zoo. By the way, no one went on the 12:30 safari.

I cannot imagine paying full price for this place. Without our membership, it would have been $52 and we did everything (but the safari) in less than three hours. It only took that long because we sat down and ate ice cream.

We bought two cups of animal food when we paid our admission. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of animals to feed. Wesley and Lydia did enjoy feeding the deer but all I could think of was how at the San Diego Wild Animal Park the deer weren't inside a fence; the kids could get right beside of the deer and pet them. Of course most zoos can't compare to the Wild Animal Park.
There were a few other animals (less than five) the kids could feed. Wesley and Lydia enjoyed feeding them and didn't complain.

Riding in the backpack is a great way for a baby to visit a zoo.
Here is a good example of how most of the animal habits were. Animals in cages.
At the bigger and nicer zoos the habitats for the animals look more natural.

The black swans were pretty (and not in cages). There are a lot of birds at this zoo.

There were also a lot of snakes on display and, thankfully, they were all behind glass. Wesley really liked looking at all the snakes.

Lydia and Wesley both fed the fish. Unfortunately, Lydia also dropped her sunglasses into the pond.

The highlight of our zoo visit was the alligator feeding. The gator habitat looked more natural than most of the exhibits. I am so glad we got to see the feeding and hear the zoo keeper's talk about the alligators. All of the alligators were once pets. When they started getting big the owners realized they couldn't keep them. The gators are fed once a day. They were enjoying chicken on Sunday.

This white duck looked very interesting.

We won't be going back. I hope the next time we go camping at Cunningham Falls, the kids don't beg to go to the zoo. So take it from us, DON'T GO.