Ready for a day in Jackson and more ice cream than you can honestly tolerate? YES!
We went to this event (the Ice Cream Safari) 3 years ago (how has it really been that long? Cora was still sporting her teeny-tiny baby pigtails...) with the Sanchez crew (we still miss them SO MUCH) and hadn't returned due to the daunting crowds and even more daunting heat and humidity... The crowds were even worse than we remembered, but the heat was exactly as we expected, so there's that. We just took advantage of the cold ice cream, and the fans and misters that were sprinkled throughout the zoo.
Does this express how hot it was? (never seen a giraffe rest like this before...)
In between loops of animal viewing, we hit up various tents for ice cream samples. I'm pretty sure Cora tried just 3 (ice cream is just not her thing - she's more a slushee and popsicle girl), James had 4 or 5, and Jay and I tried 6 or 7. Our friends at The 'Sip were handling the HippoBerry tent, and the Huckleberry ice cream was definitely one of our favorites. The kids liked the sherbet, birthday cake, and plain vanilla (where they had CANDY toppings, of course). I honestly preferred my favorite, Mint Chocolate Chip, and the other chocolatey varieties, like peanut butter fudge and mocha almond fudge (though I'll never understand why people ruin perfectly good ice cream by adding nuts to it...) I feel bad for not remembering all the cute ice cream names, but the tents did not loudly and proudly display them this year, so they were harder to figure out. There were 21 flavors total, and as a group, we didn't even hit up half of them. Guess we'll have to try again next year...
Tossing the kids to the flamingoes. A weird tradition Jay has...
With full bellies, we abandoned the animals and tent city for the splash pad...
After 2 hours in the heat, we were done. And hungry for some real food. So we headed up to our Jackson-area staple (Five Guys) for some lunch and more free splash pad playing. Well, James got to play. Cora refused to eat her lunch, and thus sat with me, picking at her cheeseburger for 45 minutes before finally giving in when we told her we'd skip the movie we had planned if she didn't eat...
His nut-cracking technique is a bit violent, but it works.
This little guy came to visit about halfway through the meal...
Since we purposely left the Kindles at home today (forcing the kids to read books or talk to us or sing in the car rather than zone-out), the ride home was quiet for a whole other reason...
Mission accomplished.
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