Budding Zoologists’ : )

We had some problems renewing our zoo pass, our last one having expired in March. As of yesterday we have officially sorted it out (although I’m not holding my breath!) so we should be good to go at the zoo now without a constant hassle or paying exorbitant amounts of money . Hooray!!! The camels continue to call me...

Even if we’re not at the zoo, the kids still like to get up close and personal with any little animal or insect that they can find.

The other rainy day I found this ENORMOUS snail at the office and brought it home for the kids. They loved it! (they don't have snails like this in Montana, which is why I thought it was so super cool!)

She’s her mothers daughter, that’s for sure.... ;)

We also had this ginormous spider who took up residence over our porch. He spun a really huge web with some really tough strings attached to it and generally just minded his own business and caught bugs (and us occasionally!). Sarah however got tired of always getting caught by a spider string and sprayed the poor fellow : ( Frank was quick to find the spiders dead little corpse and he and L proceeded to poke, examine and play with it.

Ella started poking and jabbing at him with her bare hands!

Two heads are better than one. Frank finally gave her a stick to use, to inspect the spider with!

Looks like she’s been fishing! Luckily I stopped her just in time before she used it as a slingshot...

And, because no post would be complete without a picture of this little guy, here’s a picture of the baby camel at the zoo!

And, because I think she’s gorgeous, the Mama Camel!

The camels at the zoo....ah, what to say about the camels? That I'm absolutely in love and infatuated by them? Glad that I have two small children to use as an excuse to ride them? That I can't stop smiling when I'm on top of one, to the point that my face starts hurting? Frankie is my little camel buddy. He is so much like me it's scary and not only did he ride them TWICE with me yesterday, but he thinks about them when he's at home. A lot. He talks about how they eat, their big teeth, and pretends to either be a camel or pretends that his sister is a camel and that he is the trainer. He yells at things to "LAY DOWN" a lot now :)

Yesterday at the zoo Frank and I were actually left in charge of the large four legged beasts, for about 15 minutes while the trainer ran off to do something. He asked us to watch them and to keep feeding them leaves so they wouldn't wander off. Okay, no problem said I, thinking that he'd only be gone for a minute. The kids and I happily fed them all the leaves, Ella ran off to play on the playground with some other kids, and Frank and I were left with two restless camels. Um, okay! I grabbed the reigns of the big one while Frankie looked around for stray leaves, and the second camel just hung around, not wanting to leave his buddy. It was pretty funny though to find myself and my two year old son babysitting camels! Of all the crazy circumstances I've found myself in! Hilarious!