Mother's Day

The morning of Mother's Day, we took it easy in the house. We cleaned the sand off our stuff from the beach and I watered the plants. Nap time was a disaster though. Since Aiden learned how to climb out of his travel crib the night before, we didn't even waste time setting it up. Instead, we let him run around in his room until he fell asleep - which ended up being on the floor directly in front of the door.

He woke up shortly thereafter, just in time to go to the Bayou Wildlife Park with the Yeager's. We stopped for Frapuccino's since hot coffee at home just wasn't doing it for me in the heat. We stopped at the Yeager's house only long enough for them to jump in their car to lead the caravan.

After you pull into the gate at the wildlife park, you are instantly surrounded by various ungulates and ostriches. We rolled the windows down and turned off the radio to get a better feel for the environment. For those of you who don't know me that well, I am distressingly afraid of birds. And I can assure you that the larger the bird gets, the larger my fear. However, I was totally okay with that ostrich being on the other side of our windshield. He stopped right in front of our car, so we had to stop and wait for him to continue his stroll. When he finally did, it was towards my open window. I was having flashes of him attacking through my window, pecking at my face and taking off my finger. I quickly rolled up my window and squealed for Travis to do the same for Aiden's window.

Don't worry. We survived.

After we got to the parking area, we left Zach and Kenley in the tram while the rest of us headed over to the petting area. Of course, there were plenty of random gazelle/antelope/deer-like animals lying around on the way.

Right next to the petting area was the giraffe enclosure. The boys really wanted to feed those giraffes. After reading the giant sign that says "DO NOT FEED THE GIRAFFES" we convinced them to give the goats a try.

One of the larger ones kept barrelling over the boys to get to the food bucket. And this black and white one in the lower portion of the photo above kept threatening to head butt when we got close to the female and her kid. Risky business.

After 15 minutes, we hopped on the tram with Zach to see the rest of the animals in the park. The ride kept going and going and going. I was surprised at how big the place was actually.



Linsey was right with me when it came to the ostriches. We both leaned our faces away from the large bird and Linsey made sure to protect her young (little Kenley was sleeping in her car seat the whole time).



Then there was this bad boy:


The tour guide told us that Goliath was new to the park and he did not yet know how to feed from the buckets without getting his horns tangled up in the tram bars. I thought he looked just fine on the outside of the tram.

Aiden seemed very interested in the camels. He thought most of the animals were pretty cool. He kept looking at the ostriches and screaming, "Ducky!" Ha! I even conquered my fears a bit and fed an ostrich. Actually, I ended up feeling more in control when I was feeding them because then I knew were their beak was going. Which was in the bucket and not in my face.




Luke was a little nervous about the horse ride, but he quickly decided riding a horse was totally worth it and gave it a go.



Aiden was not feeling so brave. The woman that walked the horses let us sit him on the bigger one for a photo. That was about as far as he was willing to go.




Check out this log in the pretty algae:

If it was an alligator, it would've bitcha!