Arkansas

We had a great trip to Arkansas with Daddy for his All American tournament. It is always fun to travel together, and Hudson and Barrett have to be two of the best car riders I know. They always amaze me! Eight hours - No complaining and only one stop the whole way there!

Jay had a blast fishing in his tournament and ended up in 12th place! We were very proud of him!

And one of the best things about it was that the boys got to participate a lot with Jay's fishing adventure. Here they are with Forrest Wood (founder of Ranger boats and who the FLW is named for). Barrett just kept calling him "the cowboy".

And Hudson even got to go up on the stage and stand with Daddy when he had his first weigh in. He was so proud. Barrett was sound asleep on the front row and missed the whole thing:(


And the fun thing for us was that while Daddy was fishing every day we got to explore Hot Springs. We found lots of fun things to do. The boys loved the science museum. They had all kinds of hands on experiments. I think I may have 2 little scientists!

Barrett loved the funny mirror.

And they were having a special dinosaur exhibit and the boys got to dig for fossils.

But by a LONG shot the most favorite place in Hot Springs was the Alligator farm and petting zoo. In fact, the boys talked me into taking them there 2 days in a row. And I was pretty excited myself to go back:) Warning - lots of pictures, but I wanted to give you a good glimpse of the alligator farm.

They got to pet a real alligator. I didn't realize how soft they are. Much softer than they look.

We even got to watch feeding time which was really cool. I would not want his job!

And I don't think I would want to get in that fence either.

And aren't these 2 alligators sweet sharing their piece of chicken!

This picture will give you a little glimpse of how close we were to the alligators. No zoom used there. I wasn't so sure it was the safest place with the little chain link fences, but the sign that read "Alligators do not harm people, crocodiles do" made me feel so much better (yea right!)

And here are the boys in front of the fence of large alligators. They actually had 4 different size groups. Inside were the babies, outside were the small alligators (3-9 years old) who were the most aggressive at feeding time, then the medium sized egg layers (9-21 years old) who the feeder called the teenagers of alligators, and then the large, fat, lazy ones which were 21-65 years old.

And this picture freaked me out a little. As I am taking a picture of the big fat alligator Hudson and Barrett have wandered off and look like they are about to pet a sweet alligator. I think that is the one from the picture above. Good thing the alligators were full!

And as much as they loved the alligator part they also loved the petting zoo. We got to get in with the goats.

Barrett loved the baby goats best and kept saying over and over how cute they were.

And Hudson loved feeding the deer.

We had a wonderful trip and couldn't have asked for better weather! We are so proud of Jay for his fishing accomplishments, and we are already looking forward to more tournament adventures in the future! It's a good thing he has 2 little boys to tag along:)