Our daughter, her husband and their two young boys came for visit us in late February.  We had a grand time.  The first exciting thing we did was go buy a papaya.  One of the people at the condo planted a papaya tree and one of the other people tried a piece of the fruit from the tree.  When they cut it open, they said it smelled like urine.  So of course I was curious and had to see for myself.  So we bought our own papaya

Fresh Ripe Papaya

Hmmm.  Looks pretty good.  I had to google it to see what to do with this.  So it said to cut off the end, scoop out the seeds, then cut off the sides.  Sounded simple enough but didn’t quite work so well so I just treated it like a cantaloupe.  Cut it in half,

Seeds

scooped out the seeds, which by the way looked super nasty.  Almost like alien pods or something….euw!  Then I cut off the skin and cut up the fruit

All cut up and ready to eat

There, that doesn’t look so bad does it?  Ha!  The only one who liked it was the baby.  And what does he know?  He eats baby food!  So most of that went in the trash.  On a side note though, it didn’t smell like urine :).

We had to do a little swimming in the pool while they were here

Water’s a little cool

First swim of the year

Then we went to the Naples Zoo.  I sang “Mama’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow” by Peter Paul and Mary all the way there.  The kids were glad when we arrived and I could quit singing ;).  The zoo claimed to be 43 acres but it seem quite small and easily walkable.  We must have come right after lunch because most of the animals were way back in a corner taking a siesta.  The first animals we saw were a couple of parrots

Ark! Polly want a cracker

Too bad we just missed the boat ride (it was lunch time for the Captains).  The boats/pontoons go around all the islands so you can see all the monkeys.  We did happen to catch this guy though.

Monkey hanging out

He and his buddy were swinging from the ropes.  Then we saw this big ol alligator

Big Al after a Big lunch

He was a big boy.

Unfortunately most of the animals were in a cage within a cage so it was hard for the kids to see them and even harder for me to take pictures :(.  Here are some of the shots I did get

Money in a cage

Big honkin turtle

Zebras lining up for food

If you can’t tell, these are zebras.  They look like it is lunch time and they are waiting for their feeder to get off his butt, turn off his phone and give them their lunch!

Zebra keeper talking on phone

The feeder on the other hand is trying to ignore those zebra eyes and finish his conversation.

Now these guys were just walking around the paths

Weird duck with pretty face

Such a cool face.  Then there was these two

Are you my mother?

Mother had a bunch of dark colored ducks and then this yellow one.  Hmmmmmmm.

We did see some cool giraffes.  I thought this one was fake

Fake giraffe

He didn’t move and his skin/fur looked too smooth.  Finally he moved.  Whoops, guess he’s real.  Then have you ever seen a close up of their antlers or what ever you call them?

Giraffe antlers

Interesting huh?  I keep saying, it doesn’t take much to amuse the feeble ;).

They even had camel rides there

Camel ride

Too bad the boys were a little too young for that.  Maybe next year.

So after a long day at the zoo, we were all tuckered out and headed back to the condo

All tuckered out