Mark came home from a field trip to the Olympic Park in Park City with exciting news. He had won one of the extra Olympic pins reserved for the athletes and other special people. He was so excited!
Have you ever been hungry enough to eat a whole horse? Well Jessie’s birds were! They finished off her picture in just two days! Misty had laid 3 eggs and is always gathering more stuffing for her nest. It is quite interesting to watch her. She chews off a small strip of paper and tucks it into her wing feathers. When her wings are full of little papers she hops back to her nest to deposit them. Unfortunately, I don’t think these eggs made it. It’s been more than 26 days and no peeping yet. So now the questions is how to get rid of dud eggs without out her going crazy like Kiwi and ripping all her feathers out too?
“In every task there is an element of fun…you find the fun and *SNAP* the job’s a game.” So true, right? Here’s Spencer’s idea of fun. Nothing like squirt gun horns to scare bullies away.
Neil is getting pretty good a throwing a ball and loves to play ball with Spencer.
Ken had meetings in Phoenix for work the week of Veteran's Day and so we pulled all the kids but Jessie out of school and took them with us. Jessie spent the week at Grandma’s house and had a fabulous time including a yoga lesson, an 11 course dinner and basic silliness. She took her birds with her and Buddy, Grandma’s cat, was quite interested in the new guests.
We were able to get a hotel room with a small kitchen in it, which was really nice so we didn’t have to go out to eat all the time. Restaurant food tends to be so disappointing. During Ken’s first day of class we worked on homework while Neil took his morning nap and then got ready to go to the zoo. When we go to the zoo we were surprised to find they were closing early and so it didn’t make much sense to only be able to spend an hour or so there so we left to check out the Botanical Gardens that were located nearby. Here’s what we saw of the zoo: some ducks and turtles sunning themselves outside the gates.
It was totally our lucky day because for some reason admission that day was free! (That’s way better than between $14 and $22 a person!)
There were SO MANY different kinds of cactus! These purple ones were on the way in.
We had been walking around for a while when Mark asked me, “Are these cactus all real?!!” I was just laughing. I wasn’t sure how he thought they’d all come to be. And of course we all had to touch some spins.
They had a monarch butterfly pavilion for us to walk through. The butterflies were pretty cold though so they were mostly at the top of the trees or hanging onto the sides trying to get warm. They did have some pretty flowers in there though. By this time Neil was tired of being held or strapped in his stroller and he wanted to RUN! 
We did learn the difference between a male and female monarch. The males have a single black dot on their bottom wings. Neat-o. And Spencer informed the guide that there are birds who have learned to pick out the yucky tasting part of the monarch so they can eat them. She didn’t really believe him -- even though it’s true. You can learn about it on the Life videos the BBC made. So after that, all the butterflies we saw were male. Weird huh. Can you see the black dots?
Mark was totally impressed with the saguaro cactus’. And they were impressive. They were SO tall. I’d say at least as tall as our house.
There were climbing cactus, short and stubby ones different colored ones. It was neat. But after a while even cactus’ get a little boring for kids.
Here’s a Teddy Bear cactus. It looks fuzzy, but not real cuddly!
Here is a pipe organ cactus.
And when I saw these little cactus I though, “wow” they don’t even look poky -- they look fuzzy. Boy are looks deceiving! They were fuzzy…but the fuzz cut me!! I couldn’t believe it, a nice “fuzzy” paper cut and it hurt!
After Spencer got bored all he wanted to do was push Neil in the stroller. The only problem is that he’s not quite tall enough to see over it and miss the people coming down the paths. It was so sweet….and so annoying.
We did get to see the inside a a cactus and guess what if you didn’t know it was a cactus you would have told me you were looking at a tree! That’s right under all that green poky skin is just wood! No wonder birds and things make their homes in cactus it’s just a tree with green poky bark.
And last of all there were these fun gigantic bugs though out the gardens. You weren’t supposed to touch them, but they were pretty cool. I liked this daddy long legs the best.
We hadn’t brought water bottles with us and were dying for a drink. I had forgotten how GROSS Phoenix water is, but I was so thirsty I tried not to care that the water at the drinking fountain tasted like a mouthful of raw soil. Mark, happy to be able to sit in the front seat, helped me navigate our directions backwards to get back to the hotel. That night we played a little catch with a baseball in the part of the parking lot without many cars until our taco soup ready.
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