Our friends the goats

Funny how the highlight of a trip can often be the simplest parts. The kids LOVED the petting zoo. They had a calf and a miniature sabu and of course goats. The kids could brush and pet the goats as much as they wanted. Each goat had on a collar, like a dog collar, that had its name on it. We all like finding out the name of each goat.
Even Eleanore got in some goat riding action.

Andrews Birds

We first discovered Andrews dislike of birds when we first got to the zoo and went to the aviary section. He jumped at every bird that he saw from the pigeons on the ground eating crumbs to the birds in their cages. Most of the birds are of course totally enclosed in their cages but some cages you can enter and look at them flying around. Seems a little dangerous to me...mostly because of the obvious repercussions of standing under flying birds but it makes for a fun experience. You go in the gate and are standing in a cage of sorts then you go through another gate and into the cage. Like at the dog park to keep the animals from getting out. Well, we went in one that had some owls in them. You had to really look to see the owls but one was hiding the corner right above the exit gate. When Andrew saw it he tore out of that cage as fast as he could and stood in the little cage between the two gates. He looked like a shark diver! He was okay to look at them from afar until we stood in front of the Condor cage and that huge Condor opened its wings...I knew little boys had high pitched screams but wow! By this time the poor kid had had enough of birds. Unless he was looking at large animals he didn't want to leave the zoo cart that we had rented. We stopped at the savanna exhibit to look at the giraffes and gazelle roaming around. Like most zoos these two peacocks where strolling around freely. Andrew didn't notice them at first, he was happy to watch the giraffes. The female peacock walked up to him and stood next to his cart. Andrew looked over and saw this huge bird standing within hands reach of him. He jumped from the cart and bolted scaring the peacock. The peacock started to run, Andrew started to run, both bird and boy thought they where being chased! They ran back and forth along the sidewalk each scaring the life out of each other! I was trying to grab Andrew, he was screaming and trying to get away from the bird, the bird was squawking and running from Andrew, people are taking pictures....it was crazy but funny in the end!

Zoo Adventures

The Phoenix zoo is running a special for the summer...kids under twelve get in free before 5:00. Leah and I decided that it would be a fun way to spend the day while she was here so we packed up the kids and all of their stuff and headed off to the zoo. We had no idea that we would have such an adventure. Ethan who is our resident animal guru wanted to see it all...every animal, every bird, every reptile! We learned that Ethan likes to read all the signs, Alek is a map fanatic, Andrew is afraid of birds, and Emily whined for 45 minutes about seeing camels! By the time we had made it half way through the temperature was over 100. The kids played in the spray park for a while then we headed to petting zoo. After that we saw a few more animals and decided it was time to go. We had been there for several hours and still had not seen the entire zoo. Ethan was sad about that but we promised to come back again. I am going to post our zoo fun in a couple of posts so that this one is not so long..

Let the FUN begin!

While Erik is away on reserves Leah is coming to play at our house...we are going to go and pick her up this morning. Hopefully we will get some of the stuff done on our long list of fun things. Then I will have more to blog about....

Bisbee AZ

For Aleks final fourth grade project each student was given a town in Arizona that they had to research. They had to do a written report and then decorate a box and build a diorama of the city inside. Alek got Bisbee. This is ironic since a lot of Erik's family comes from Bisbee. This is his Bisbee project...






We learned a lot of fun things about the town and it's history. The have some very cool places to visit there. Alek liked being able to tell his class about his personal ties to the town. He has decided that our next vacation should be to tour the mine and the haunted hotel there. Its not that far away so we are hoping to do it soon.

Say hello to our little friend.

Or more like our newest enemy. We found our first scorpion of the year the other day. I being the arachnid wuss that I am of course screamed at it first then grabbed the nearest thing I could find and trapped it. I called Erik at work and let him know first that he was welcome to put in for a transfer to anywhere else his work could send him to (even Cheyenne) and second that there was a fun present waiting for him trapped under the small garbage can on the back porch.


After that we made an appointment for our exterminator to come out and visit. Kisses to the exterminator guy! When he got to the house Andrew told him all about his mommy screaming at the scorpion and trapping it under the garbage can for his dad. Good thing is that he did a full flush out of the cinder block walls for me and put delta dust all over, bad news is that it can take 10-14 days to stop seeing the yucky bugs all together. Most of them are not dangerous on the "could possibly kill you" level but I have heard that a scorpion sting is like being burned with a lite cigarette, not something I know about and would like to keep it that way! I hate those things! Thankfully Molly is good about letting us know when she sees them but still....eeewww!

When your the youngest....

you get to dress up a lot! Emily has discovered that not being the only girl anymore can be a lot of fun. She has found Eleanore to be a fantastic dress up partner. She used to try to get Andrew to play dress up with her but he always complained about what she wanted him to wear and she always got frustrated because he wouldn't wear high heel shoes. Eleanore never complains about the accessories she has to wear and although she can't wear high heel shoes yet she has had her toe nails painted! I love it because it keeps both girls busy for at least a little bit before Emily is on to her next project.