I've been scolded a little for not blogging other than prayer request since my parents came down (a whole month ago, yikes). So I'm trying to get caught up; I have fallen to peer preasure. You must needs understand; however, that all of the topics for which I need to blog require long and lengthy blogs, meaning it takes me much time to write them. As one of my history professors always said, "what is easy to read was hard to write. Good writing takes time and rewrites." Not that I devote the kind of effort to blogging that I use to spend on my simply marvelous and exciting papers, but you get the idea.I suppose I were to do this in chronological order, which would indeed be logical, I would tell you all about the Jasper Meeting, our trip to Busch Gardens, and then about the meeting this past weekend, and the WONDERFUL SECRET I have that Justin doesn't know about. However, that would make far too much sense, and besides I don't have time to write about all of that before dinner and Church tonight, so I hope for the moment, my dear readers, you will be content to hear about Busch Gardens.Gary and I have passes to Busch Gardens for the year. Mom and Dad got them for us for Christmas and they have been a great investment. Florida residents can go once, and come back all year. We've been three times so far and I would strongly encourage other Florida residents to go, because that really is the best deal. There is so much different stuff to do. Gary of course loves the roller coasters and I love to watch the animals. Then of course now that it's warm, there are water rides, and who can dislike those. Now that I've collected my money for advertising, here's some stuff from the last trip (in hopes that Borrowed Dad will once again leave us in laughter).
My favorite animals are the tigers. "War Eagle!!! Go Auburn!!!" Seriously though, I like to watch them, and the white Bengal tigers are my favorite. They are like cats, but huge and very graceful. (Borrowed Dad would probably here point out not at all like Gary.) They, unlike all the other big cats, love water. You really can't tell from this picture but this is a gi-normous turtle. (This is a word I stole from a 4 year old boy in London, in reference to the plane we were getting on to fly from London to Houston. You can only appreciate it when you say it in a British accent like a 4 year old.) This guy is probably big enough to ride on, except it would take all day to get anywhere, and just maybe he bites. I don't know that though.

One of the things that is so neat to me about Busch Gardens that is very different from anywhere else I've ever seen, is their attention to the details of gardening and planting. On top of all the small stuff that they do. They also, always have all these different fantastic animals made almost completely of plants. Here are a couple of butterflies, but they also have a lion, a tiger, an eagle, and a few others too.

Of course other than the food and the rides, Gary's favorite stop is to see these hideous creatures. In my opinion, this is either one brave turtle, or one with a death wish. You can decide. So this gator, saw us and started swimming down the little channel toward us. You need to know that there is this not all that sturdy in my opinion fence that is about 3 foot tall between the gators and us. So that monsterous gator head, was really about that close to us. After he made his way down to us, some of his buddies, thought they would come check us out too. So when we had four gators a foot or two away, I decided it was time to go somewhere else.