Life as a Yowler

We have been asking Caed for a couple weeks now what he wanted to do to celebrate his birthday. His answer remained the same “I would like to go to explore the jungle.” Well, seeing how there’s not too much jungle in the state of Texas, we decided the zoo would be the next best thing.

We first drove to the Dallas Zoo. After doing some research, I found they had a very highly rated African Safari section of their zoo. We drove there yesterday morning and it was pouring, and I mean pouring down rain. Joah broke the silence and asked what we were all thinking “ummm dad, is this zoo indoor or outdoor?” We waited in the parking lot for a half hour with absolutely no break in the rain. We looked at the weather and realized Fort Worth wasn’t getting any rain, and they also had a zoo. We saw that the Fort Worth zoo is rated one of the top five zoo’s in the nation. Plus it just happened that Wednesday is their half off admission day.  It seemed like a great idea.

It was! We all loved it. There was so much to see. There were tons of people there, including several Summer academy programs that had lots of school age kids. Luckily the zoo was so big, that we really weren’t fighting crowds too bad.

After lunch we were outside waiting on our older kids to use the bathroom. Brandon and I were watching as several kids in the Summer Academy program were disobeying their teacher. Brandon pipes up and goes “you know, I overheard they are putting in a new kid exhibit at this zoo.” It broke the tension and made the kids and even the teacher laugh. It also made the kids obey their teacher.

We took a train ride.

We took so many pictures. Notice Joah’s camera. There is a story behind that. Last night when we got back to the RV and were getting ready to head to the pool, we noticed Joah’s camera was missing. He was devastated and it was nowhere to be found. We called the zoo and they were closed at that point. No one had turned it in, that they knew of but they said to call back tomorrow. Joah went to bed crying and devastated. He had so many pictures and memories on there of our travels. We all prayed with him that God would help someone to turn it in if they found it. This morning Joah went with Brandon to his store training. They called the zoo as soon as it opened and guess what….someone turned in his camera. He was SO excited and relieved. Brandon drove him there to pick it up between store trainings.

Isla loves animals. She is to the age where nothing gets by her. She wanted to be lifted up, out of the stroller, at each exhibit. She wanted to see those animals.

We got to see the hippos go under water.

My weird kiddos are amazed by snakes. They love them. Isla kept saying “ssssssssss.”

We all loved the petting zoo area. We got to see this baby Texas Longhorn.

The boys and Isla brushed and brushed the goats. I didn’t hardly see Brielle the entire half hour we spent with the goats. She was over holding a little baby refusing to put him down.  All of the kids were upset, when we told them it was time to leave. We explained we would never see all the animals before closing time, if we didn’t leave.

This zoo had crocodiles and alligators.

The touch pool.

We made it around the entire zoo before they closed. That was our goal, and we made it.

Isla stayed awake the entire time, until the walk to the van. She finally fell asleep. She even stayed asleep when I transferred her to the car seat. She was beat.

We drove back to camp and decided to head to the pool. We were all really hot and wanted to cool off. I already wrote about realizing Joah’s camera was missing at this point in the day. He told us he was too sad to swim, but ended up changing his mind when we got to the pool. We swam for awhile. Then we all headed back to the motorhome and got changed.

We took Caed downtown to walk around and go out for a birthday treat. The waitresses at the restaraunt all came and sang happy birthday to him. He got embarrassed, but also loved it.

We headed back to the motor home and let him open his gifts from us. We got him two transformers. He is obsessed with transformers right now.

Caed had a great birthday. We are very thankful for him and the joy he brings to our family!