Fishing

 The last weekend in May we picked up the girls some new fishing rods. They had kept arguing over who was going to have to use the old mickey mouse rod we originally bought for Kylie a few years ago, and who was going to get a new one. We gave up and just let them each pick out a new one.

So they spent the rest of that afternoon practicing their casting. They were getting pretty good at it. Sidney even got hers over the fence and into the neighbors yard once. And she managed to only put it over a wire (a not live wire) to the house, twice. :)

I brought the cats out for some outside time and they had a blast chasing the little rubber fish as the girls reeled them in. :)

Terra was really tired after all that chasing.

 The next day we took the girls out to the city ponds. We hadn't gone fishing around here yet, and we had heard good things about the ponds, so we thought we'd give it a shot.

Sidney's little baby fish. :)

Kylie letting a fish go.

can barely see our bobbers

Sidney just wanted to hold one for a second...then

gave it right back to dad!

Kylie caught the first fish, and Mike got a picture of her

on his phone.

Kylie caught the only perch. A small one. Then between all of us we caught another 7 fish. All bluegills. And only 1 or 2 kinda worth keeping, so we didn't keep any. But we caught enough at a decent pace to keep the girls entertained!

Hopefully we can take them out again soon and try out a different place!

Mattmiller Vaca -South Dakota Tour - Part 3

The last thing we did was visit Reptile Gardens. It was very cool. They had lots of interesting species there.
They also do 3 different types of shows, a gator show, a bird show and a snake show. The first time we went we only did the gator show. You could easily spend almost a whole day there between looking at all the animals, watching all three shows and eating lunch there. they have the shows staggered through out the day so that you are able to catch all of them. We chose to see the gator show and then just look at everything else before we headed home. We were given season passes when we purchased our tickets, so the girls and I have already been back once and we will hopefully get to go a couple more times before they close for the season.

Gator Wrestling

We're watching you.....

Giving Fluffy a pet

petting a python

they have beautiful plants all over the place too

This is Paco a Nandy Conure

Here is Bubba, a Military Macaw

a ball python

Lin-Lin, another Military Macaw

Ruby, a Green Winged Macaw

Riga, a female Eurasian Eagle Owl

one of the hundreds of snake species they have there

another cool green snake...

watching the iguanas

Maniac....their biggest crocodile

a Giant Monkey Waxy Frog......

I kid you not....that is what it is called.

a couple of Spurred Tortoises

giving a scratch to a giant tortoise

scratching another giant tortoise

and yet another giant tortoise

I'm pretty sure Kylie could have stayed in the giant tortoise

exhibit the whole time.

It was pretty neat to watch them walk around though.

For some reason, they had a prairie dog exhibit....

But they had this little bubble in the middle of the enclosure for

people to look through and get an eye level of the prairie dogs...

Sidney thought it was pretty sweet.

Kylie, one on one, with a prairie dog

Both girls thought the playground area was fun.

Our little vacation was awesome and we had a great time with Rick and Carol. We were so glad they were able to come out for a week to hang out with us and do some sight seeing with us.

Summer started off with a bang and then was pretty low key. We have found plenty to keep us mostly busy. And I will get going on a couple more posts to catch up to present time!!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer so far!!