Callaway Gardens 2008

We went on our annual Labor Day camping trip. We stayed at F.D. Roosevelt Park. It was a very pretty park. We didn’t see much besides the lake and the campsite though. We got in really late on Friday night and Peter didn’t go to bed until about midnight because he had a nice nap in the car. That didn’t stop him from getting up at 5:30 in the morning though and waking up his brother. Well since we didn’t want them to wake up the whole campsite, we decided to go ahead and head to Callaway Gardens for the Hot Air Balloon Festival which had a pancake breakfast and the balloon launch was at 7:15.

Andrew had never seen hot air ballooons before and we didn’t think he was that in to them while we were there but he talked a lot about them later so I think he liked him. We also saw a classic car show which he just walked around wordlessly with an occasional comment but then later he kept mentioning it so I guess he liked it too. We actually weren’t sure if he was having fun at all because he kept asking to go back to camping.

His answer will vary upon each asking but I think his favorite part was the Butterfly Center. One of my favorite quotes at the butterfly center was Andrew saying “Butterflies are very fragile. We have to hold them with both hands.” We laughed and explained to him that there would be no holding of butterflies. We went around the butterfly center the first time and then as we were leaving, we noticed the butterfly ID cards and he sat down with one and pointed to each butterfly and said “we saw this one and this one and this one.” I think he pointed to every one on the map and said that until he got to the very bottom and said “we didn’t see that one.” We had to put the card back and we left and Andrew started whining to Chris about how he really wanted a butterfly card. So we checked out the gift shop and it seemed like a good souvenir so we got him one.
We went the back the next day and it didn’t fly when we told him that we had use their butterfly cards so we ended up letting him carry his in. He walked around the center again with his card and did a pretty good job at identifying the various butterflies. A little girl had a butterfly on her finger and Andrew properly identified it as a paper kite.

Peter spent a lot time in the stroller and the car seat. When he was able to get down, he had loads of fun

He also had a lot of fun at the camp site. Unfortunately the camp site was nothing but a gravel parking lot so we had to constantly take rocks out of his hands before he ate them. He wasn’t terribly interested in sleeping in the tent but he loved bouncing around on the air mattresses and playing with his brother.

Picture doesn’t do it justice but here is a very dirty Peter.

Here’s just an extra picture of Peter getting out of his car seat. He is 3 weeks shy of his 1^st birthday but we went ahead and flipped his car seat so that he wouldn’t cry all weekend. Plus one of the ways that we calmed him down and once got him to go to sleep was to let him watch Bob the Builder. He is normally not allowed to watch TV but I make exceptions when he is screaming. And we have discovered that he is a big Bob fan.

Most photos compliment of Christopher Craig.