Zoo and Aquarium visit...

More pictures from our mini-vacation! These are from Pt.Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. My mom and I were just there last year with the kids but my how things can change in a year - for us and for the zoo. Karleigh loves this zoo even though we have a great one (with more animal variety in my opinion) just 45 minutes from our house. However, the view here just cannot be beat and the weather was perfect. The breeze blowing off the water kept it from getting the slightest bit too hot.

The kids were both pretty good this day too, Rylan was acting a bit more 2 1/2 than I would have liked but it ended up being just fine.

We had a great opportunity to see Java, the tiger, this time. He's a cranky old boy, in fact in the words of his handler - who was giving him a snack - "he's a jerk!" So, you'll never see him with the female tiger. He's just never learned how to play well with others. He sure is pretty to look at though! At any rate, here are some more pictures from our zoo visit.

The seahorse is kind of blurry but that's because I didn't want to use my flash and kill the poor guy... really, there's no flash photography in this exhibit.

Tomorrow, we've just promised the kids that we'll do something fun - we need it and it'll be good to help keep my mind off the heavy stuff that I'm sympathetically going through with some people close to me. We have no idea what we're going to do yet. Just as soon as the kids fall asleep we're going to come up with a game plan. Karleigh thinks we just need to go to the park and that today was lots of fun as it was. One of my girlfriends who "lives in my computer" was out here (meaning the west coast) visiting so she came by the house today. It was such a treat to get to visit with her in person since we've 'known' each other for three years now. She is one of the gals who took part in the wonderful gifts for Eli's garden so it was really therapeutic to get to share it with her and have her see it in person. Of course it wasn't in tip-top shape since this year has been a tough one on the plants and it's getting to be fall. We still have some color in the garden but the biggest and brightest stuff has bloomed over and been trimmed down in preparation for next spring!

I do have 2 people who need your prayers. J and M are both looking at big, HUGE changes in their lives... each of them is going through one of the top five most stressful, life changing things. Please pray that they are able to make it through this phase with ease and little stress.