Feeling Behind

I need to do a few posts to get us caught up before we head to Utah for some serious fun with family that will have a ton of pictures I am sure.

A few weeks ago we had the chance to go to the zoo with our friends the Maas'. They were visiting from Ohio. We had a great time. My kids kept wandering off on their own but what is new. The zoo recently opened an exhibit called the Giants of the Savannah which was really neat. That is where we found these great elephant statues. You can see my friend Lindsey in the back in the blue shirt.

I could not get Arabella to look at me and Joey does not look so happy either he kept trying to get her to look. Oh well.
We tried to get the kids all together by the giraffes and these were my two best shots. In my pictures the little kids were looking at the camera most consistently. The older ones just wanted to get moving to the next thing.

Really, just look one more time?!

We saw an interactive lion show. The best part was just before it started. A lion suddenly bounded the little hill an pounced on the window. A girl was sitting against the window right where it pounced. It nearly scared her to death.

We also fed the birds. I do not have pictures because I was apparently very attractive to the birds. A bird landed on my head right as I walked in and Arabella freaked out. She was screaming like it was killing me. I got it off of my head using my seed stick and it sat in my hand happily eating. Then I had another bird land on my purse and begin to eat the little container of worms Joey had. The bird proceeded to drop one of the worms into my purse. Jon kept chasing the birds trying to get them to eat and one of the zookeepers kept chasing after Jon telling him he was scaring the birds and likely going to step on one. It was comical to say the least. My friend got a picture of the bird on my head and I will try to get it from her. I am so glad we got to see them while they were here.

Almost two weeks ago, I decided we needed to do something fun but time was a factor so I thought let's camp in the backyard. The kids loved it, parents laughed a lot about it.

Peter and I laughed as we sat roasting hot dogs over a fire when it was 96 degrees outside at 7:00pm. You can't have a fire and not do s'mores. We all enjoyed those.

Peter said to me, "Are we really going to sleep outside?" I left it up to the kids because I was questioning my idea as it was still at least 90 and almost 9:00pm. We toughed it out with the fan in the tent run by an extension cord. Oh blessed electricity!

I would like to say that the below picture was the only wildlife experienced for the camping trip but it was not. And this was not the only link of said wildlife to Jon.

As I was not sleeping well about 5:30 am, (I had set my alarm on my phone to get up early and head to the temple) I suddenly realized who was the last person to come out of the house...Jon. He is horrible about closing the door but he made a final trip to the bathroom. I sat straight up and blurted out, Oh No! And sure enough the door had been left open all night long. We also had failed to turn off the downstairs AC, although it did get cooler so I don't think it ran all night long. I did not find too many bugs flying around the one light we left on. I went upstairs and got ready for the temple. I came down and Joey was up. I started noticing a few bugs. I handed Joey the fly swatter and put him on bug duty. I went in the kitchen to find a smaller than the one above frog hopping across the floor. Joey and I caught said frog and he took it outside. Peter came in and I asked if Arabella was still asleep. He said no, she was inside. I had not yet seen her and she has a homing beacon for me. Joey ran upstairs to look and I headed for the garage. It turns out she had followed Joey outside with the frog and he had opened the gate to the driveway to release the frog there. She had escaped and he had closed the gate. In the searching for her, we came across a small gecko like lizard upstairs and then we found one gianormous cockroach-they really are bigger in Texas.

Really it was a fun experience and I can now laugh about the frog, not really the cockroach yet.