Wild!

This past weekend, I went with the boys to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Houston while Jerry was at school in Indianapolis. I always enjoy vising with Jonathan and Stephanie, and my kids LOVE playing with their cousins. It is great that they live close enough to drive to for the weekend. We went swimming twice, to an indoor maze/play area, and to the Bayou Wildlife Park. That was so cool! It was one of those places where you ride around in a tram with buckets of animal feed and the wild animals come right up, stick their heads in the tram and help themselves to the food! We saw giraffes, all sorts of different exotic breeds of deer, zebras, a zonkey, ostriches, emus, rhinos, all sorts of bulls and cattle from Africa, and one very, very fat pig among other animals. We all had a really good time, despite the above average temperatures in Houston right now!
That baby giraffe is only three 1/2 months old. He is already over 8 feet tall, though!

The ostriches were very bold and would peck at your arm if it was in the way of the food buckets!

Ethan and Ian were a bit more reserved than their older cousins about the whole thing, but still enjoyed it. They were more timid about the animals eating right out of their bucket, too!

I don't remember what this one was called...but it was nice and gentle about the feeding, which the kids appreciated!

In response to the ostriches!

An enormous buffalo!

Andrew's close encounter with a camel...the camels were by far the most bold animals. They practically got in the tram with us! They were going to find the food whether we wanted them to or not!

In wild kid news, both the big boys are going for allergy testing over the next several weeks. They have both been on daily allergy medication since they were one and have moderately severe symptoms. So I am taking them for regular torture sessions while we figure out what they are allergic to.

Here's Aaron showing of his 15 sticks from today which revealed sensitivities to baker's yeast, soy, tomato, and corn. I don't think any of them except for soy are all that strong of reactions, so I don't know if it will mean that he cannot eat these things or not. He still has some foods left to test, then on to inhaled allergens and chemicals. Fun, fun.

Speaking of wild kids, I think Andrew is going to take off all over this house in no time at all. He went from pushing up on his arms, to going up on his hands and knees, to rocking, to spinning around on his bottom, to rolling repeatedly to get to something, to hopping on his hands and knees in just a couple short weeks! Then he decided to become a yoga baby. He does a perfect downward dog pose!