The Other Mama: safari park

We have had an adventurous day today! Both of the kids are home with me for the next 1 1/2- 2 weeks because their pre-schools/ mothers morning out programs are closed for the break between summer and fall. {What, you don't get that break off of work? Well, me either! Why can't we learn and schedule our vacations accordingly?}

So, I've got all kinds of fun activities lined up because mommy becomes a bit boring and I'm determined not to let Owen quote every line from any Thomas video. He knows so many now and just throws them out { e.g. "Slow down and puff with care!"} whenever and I have to explain to people that he's quoting a Thomas movie... and I'm sure they're thinking he's seen it 100 times... but he just quotes anything!

Anyway, today we ventured out with Cate and her daughter Ellie to Harmony Safari Park. You've never heard of it? Apparently no one has! It's a free range zoo that you drive through. It's about a 25 minute drive from downtown, but not too terribly bad to get there. Free range zoo means that the animals just roam around and are not in cages. "Roam around" means that they come up to your car and eat out of your hand. How can this be? Take a look at these pictures:

This is one of many ostriches. They were our least favorite because of their attacking nature and weird googly eyes. Sorry if you're an ostrich lover.

I honestly can't remember what this was, but this shows you how close they all were. This is Cate petting whatever the animal is. Cate, do you remember? Looks horse-ish, but I know there weren't any horses.And this is Tattoo the zebra. I think he was Owen's favorite. And I was his favorite. We had a big bucket of feed and apparently the animals know this. Is this crazy, or what?Cate said, "Oh look, get the camel over here", so I threw out food and he came running. Then he snuck around to her side! She screamed because of the lovely surprise, but that didn't scare him away. He wouldn't leave and had his WHOLE CAMEL HEAD in the car for a while. This is Cate trying to get him out!

There were turkey, deer, llama, monkeys (in cages), turtles, big ole snakes (appropriately caged), deer with fuzzy antlers (are those just deer? we were calling them reindeer because of the kiddos, but I'm honestly not sure if they are deer or what), bison, buffalo, aligators- the list goes on. And I could post a ton of pictures, but here are the rest of my favorites:

Owen was in awe of the whole experience. I kept hyping up the "zoo" and I know he thought that Barney was going to be there (one of his other favorite videos- I highly recommend), so I hope this met his expectations. He seemed pretty happy! (The cup is full of feed that he never threw out.)

How often do you get to see this?

Here's precious little Ellie waving to some animal. Cooper (our babysitter) is in the "way" back with Harris. I'm so glad she came along because she could maintain the whole back 2 rows. She is great!