Tohono Chul Park

It was a perfect day for an adventure, cool with a slight drizzle.  We went to the "Reptile Ramble" at the Tohono Chul Park that is an interactive program with snakes, lizards, and turtles.  There is also a Children's Garden with neat sculptures to climb, bird houses to look in, and a little "river" to float their wooden boats down.  It was a wonderful day wrapped up with a trip to Toys R Us and ice cream cones :)

Jarron and Mason floating their boats down the river.
Jarron captured by the tarantula table.
The boys climbing on the rattlesnake bench.

Reptile Ramble

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deathly fear of snakes.  I can hold lizards, beetles, worms, mice, and even a tarantula but I cannot deal with the thought of a snake anywhere near me.  Well, today was a step forward in my bravery department and I was able to look through my camera lens and take pictures of my fearless boys touching many snakes.  I think about 5 different species to be exact.  Although I did panic a bit when there were 3 different snakes all around me and I had to high tail it out of there, but I didn't scream once.

Jarron and Mason are sitting with Daddy and petting a "Mountain King Snake"
As you can see, the closer the snake is the happier the boys are.
Mason is ecstatic that the snake is "In his lap".  At this point I have trouble breathing!!!

Finally we are done with the snakes and have moved on to the very poisonous Gila Monster :)

Is it weird that I am at ease with this one, huh?

Full House

Eric brought home a toad from his work today and I started thinking about all our animals that we have accumulated lately.  Of course we have our beloved dog Ebony and cat Zyan, but this year we have added to our brood.  Linney is our Guinea Pig, Hoppy is the new toad, Little Legs is the centipede, and Poopy (Mason named him) is the sun spider.  Oh My!

Bowling

Jarron, Mason, Alyssa, and Robbie.  We took the boys bowling for the first time with our best friends.  They had a lot of fun but only lasted one game, that's o.k., Lori and I were just happy to be in air conditioning :)

They were fascinated by the hand dryer.

Here they are waiting patiently for Mason's ball to make it down the alley, it took a while.

They are using "The Force" (Robbie's Star Wars obsession) to direct the ball to the pins :)

Vacation

We went on a road trip to the Northwest Coast of Oregon to visit with Eric's parents.  We were gone for 2 weeks and had a blast.  The boys were very well behaved (most of the time) and we took our time to see the sites along the way.  See our pictures below, just hover the mouse arrow over a picture if you want it to pause.  Enjoy, we sure did :)

Our vacation April 2009