Christmas in the Swamp

This evening I took the kids out to the Okefenokee Swamp Park to see the Christmas lights. This was the first year that we have visited the park during Christmas time, but I doubt that it will be the last. The kids had so much fun. After being there for an hour and a half, I still had to drag Olivia away. Her words to me as we were leaving the park were "but mom, I didn't get to see everything". We may not have seen everything, but we sure came close. We arrived at 6- right when the park opened for the night. This turned out to be smart because the park was not busy when we got there, but was packed when we left.

Our first stop of the evening was the enchanted train ride through the swamp. Had there not been Christmas lights everywhere, it would have been really spooky- imagine pitch black in the middle of the swamp. The kids started the train ride in a good mood, but got a little restless about 10 minutes into it. Owen started crying because he wanted to get down. Of course he couldn't get down because we were on a ride. I tried to distract him by pointing out the lights, which only seemed to make him more upset. The people sitting about five seats up from us then began singing "you better watch out, you better not cry..." and I started wondering if they were trying to hint something to me. Fortunately, the ride ended quickly and that was the last bit of fussiness that I had from either kid. Once we got off the big train, we walked around the park, saw the lights, listened to the musicians, and visited Santa.

Before we left, I took the kids to the kiddie train to ride it. I think that this was the highlight for both of them. I started off just putting Olivia on the kiddie train by herself. I didn't think that Owen would like it since he had fussed on the big train. Wrong! Owen watched Olivia go around on that little train and started pointing and trying to get down out of my arms. So, I put him on it the next time around, and he did great. I bet they rode that thing ten times or more. We had a great night, and would like to go back again next year.