Swimming with Stingrays

We wanted to swim with dolphins, but that was booked so we chose stingrays instead.

On the boat out 

Touching one 

Kissing one 

It's on my back. I'm not so sure about this 

No fair! He has a shirt on 

The ride back. Happy boys 

This photo shows her personality - always independent

Overall this wasn't the best excursion for us. Two of us get motion sick - not an issue on a large boat, but a huge issue on a small boat to and from the excursion. Then when we got to the sandbar, I could only reach the bottom if I was standing on tip toe while holding a kid who was afraid of the stingrays. The stingrays don't move around people, so when a 6 foot wide stingray would come by it would knock me over. This didn't help the anxious child. So we switched which child we were holding. I held the happy one who wanted to be close up for the meeting with a stingray. Then the anxious child and I went back to the boat until it was time to go.

Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

More fun at the museum. Seriously, you can't see everything in one day - and we are the people that walked to all of the DC monuments and the Kennedy Center in one day.

Watching chicks hatch 

Baby chicks 

Our family is a party in and of itself! 

What does this do?

Birds at the Renaissance Festival

After watching an amazing show about predator birds, we had the opportunity to get close to some. These are amazing creatures and the rescue that rehabilitates and releases them into the wild comes to the festival to educate the public.

A bald eagle 

Tiny owl (it is fully grown) 

Big owl

Wildlife at the Renaissance Festival

You never know what type of creatures you might meet when you travel back through time...

Discussions with mermaids 

 Riding a camel

Riding an elephant

Denver Children's Museum, part 1

We visited the Denver Children's Museum and had a great time. This is the first of 5 posts about it.

They found a door just their size! 

This was in the veterinary area. We are looking at an x-ray to see if the animal is ok. 

Clearly this puppy needs a complete check up! 

They decided he needed some shots to get better. 

This was from a different area - here they are acting like animals.

Butterflies in the Backyard!

Once we finally convinced the butterflies to leave their enclosure and go free, they stuck around for about 30 minutes.

It actually walked onto his hand.

She also had one that was perfectly happy being carried around!

See what I mean about calm and friendly?

Here they are passing one of the butterflies back and forth.

They did eventually all fly away, so I know they weren't hurt. We also left some orange slices out in case they had trouble finding food. It is November after all!

Butterflies!

Every couple of years we raise butterflies from caterpillars. This year our curriculum told us to so it was perfect. Here are some of the photos from our butterfly release. *Outside temperatures must be above 55F in order to release them, so we can do this at least 11 months of the year. Other locations are more limited.

We opened their habitat and no one flew out.

We enticed them out with orange slices.

One child is much happier about this than the other.

Come back tomorrow for both kids getting up close with the butterflies. These were some of the friendliest and calmest butterflies we have ever had. (I have also done this with classes at school for over a decade and this was truly exceptional.)

Other Animals

This is the final post from the exotic animal park in Oklahoma. These are just some of the other animals we were able to interact with. They also had a large number of animals you couldn't touch - tigers, lions, ligers, etc. Those pictures just aren't as interesting.

I don't like touching snakes. I'm not too bad if they are on the ground. Right after this Sweet Son pushed the snake completely off of him and it started darting it's tongue toward my face. I wasn't thrilled to say the least.

The snake looks much more relaxed for them, but if you notice the tail is wrapped completely around Sweet Daughter's throat. They neither one complained. We decided we aren't a snake family.

Petting wolves. They are domesticated and were really just like big dogs - big, wet, stinky, shedding dogs.

Camels

This post is the second in a series from our trip to an exotic animal park in Oklahoma. This post also proves camels are always photogenic, haha.

We were offered the "opportunity" to kiss a camel. Yes, you read that right. They gave us a cookie to put half in our mouth and half out and the camel would lean over and take it from us. This had mixed results.

First up, Wonderful Husband gets a kiss

I'm next and really not sure I want to kiss a camel

Should have gone with my instinct, though our tour guide enjoyed my reaction

There is no way the kids were going to get close to kissing a camel after my reaction. They just fed him from their hands.

Smart kids

Birthday Trip

This year for their birthday the kids had very specific requests. Sweet Son wanted bacon. Sweet Daughter wanted a real tiger. Wonderful Husband (his birthday is the same week) wanted a trip out of town. I made all of their dreams come true.

First the bacon, we ate at diners or Sonic for every meal for the entire trip so he had bacon 6 meals in a row. That was the easy part. Real tigers and a trip - this took some research. I found a place in Oklahoma that calls itself an exotic animal park. The reviews were extremely mixed. Some people said it's great because you can hold baby tigers, see animals that you wouldn't normally see even in a zoo, etc. The other reviews hated it saying the tour guide was crude, cussing, and clearly didn't care about the welfare of the animals. The many large animals were all in cages and not anything even close to a natural habitat. I had no idea if this would turn out great or awful, but it was my only option for combining a trip and real tigers.

The day we were going to visit the tigers it was raining. It rained the entire time we were there. This made it exceptionally muddy on the dirt trails. It also made it cooler and the animals much more active. We didn't see any animals pacing in cages and they were all well fed and the cages were clean. We also didn't get the usual tour guide. Our guide was appropriate and explained everything clearly.

Baby tiger!

She had help holding it

They look at each other

Awwww

The family with a different baby tiger. This one wasn't as docile as the first so it didn't do any individual visits.

I will post more photos from other parts of our experience there next week.

The Bear's Den

Have you ever wanted to eat dinner with two 400 pound black bears? I'm serious. This is a real thing. The bears are safely locked up, but they do sit at a table and eat. They pick through their food and swat at each other for the good stuff.

We are all headed toward their table

They sit and eat and have the table manners of a pack of elementary students

We are about 5 ft away from their table. There are multiple cages/fences/etc between us

 This was toward the end. They both have some food inside their arms that they are protecting

Here one of the trainers was having them do tricks for dessert. This allows them to check on the health of the bears without ever getting inside the cages

Sharkarosa (5)

In case you wanted to feed animals after the petting zoo, safari ride, and educational shows, there was still a chance! By this point we were out of the food we had bought. However, there was a lot of the food pellets on the ground just out of the reach of the animals and our kids felt bad about that. They said it's not nice to want something be able to see it and smell it, but just not reach it. So they spent a great deal of time feeding them.

They are used to feeding horses from when they took horseback riding lessons.

Yes, another camel. This one was temporarily separated from the herd because of an injury so it got lots of extra love.

Come back tomorrow for the story of two 400 pound bears eating at a table just a few feet away from us.

Sharkarosa (4)

Sharkarosa also offers educational lectures. We attended one about kangaroos and another about reptiles. These are the photos from the reptile presentation.

They wanted to sit in the front row. They don't get that from me.

Of course he wanted to pet the snake.

He wanted to pet everything. He said they felt soft.

She said she prefers hugs to petting reptiles. She gets that from me.