Quick tour of The Swamp

 Brett's family came to visit this week, so we showed them around our neighborhood. The kids wanted to go to the lake, so we did a little boating and tried to not get sunburned. This is the view of the shore from the boat.

Ethan and Brandon had fun steering the paddle boat, then Josh and Makenna took a turn.

 We've been to this lake lots of times, but I'd never noticed the tiki head/totem pole before.

 Josh is always putting something in his mouth. I guess I should be glad it's not sand...

We waved to the canoe as it passes the tall dock where we were hanging out.

 After boating for a while, we took the cousins to see our baby gators. Some of the gators weren't so little anymore. This little guy was sunning himself on the grass, ignoring us.

 Then we went to check out campus. Here's a fraternity lion that gets a new coat of paint every week, with different colors or patterns. We never know what we're going to see when we pass by.

 We did a little gator wrestling...

 then the gator got hungry. Good thing Ashley was wearing that Hello Kitty hat. Things could have been much worse...

 We hiked up to the top of the football stadium. Which is a pretty big feat. It's a stadium that can hold 90,000 people, and made some of us dizzy being up so high.

 Everyone was pretty hot and tired. So we sat down with a different bull gator than the one that tried to eat Ashley. As you can see on the plaque, Good ol' Stumpy Harris generously donated it to the university. Someone should name their firstborn after him. Also, I love Josh's gator face!

 After a long day of walking around in the hot sun and mild humidity, we decided to go see the bats come out of their houses. I'm not sure why we bothered, because Brett's family was with my family when we watched the bats pouring out of the bridge in Austin, TX, and ours like watching a trickling stream after seeing Niagara Falls.

But even if the bats were a little lame, and we left as soon as they started to fly out, we had so much fun hanging out together, and were glad Brett's family decided to come visit us!