Lions,Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

Spring as sprung. So we took our annual trip to the zoo. It was quite cool in the morning, so all the animals were out and about. We had a close encounter with a jaguar (above) and got to see him do more than sleep.


The bears were out too. This is a spectacled bear (although he doesn't look very spectacled). He was fun to watch.


Everybody loves the komodo dragon. They even had dragon babies. They weren't very cute, but very interesting to watch.


Another new addition was this baby gibbon. It took awhile to see him, because they stayed on the roof of the viewing area. But they had signs to watch out because he is so little that he can get out of the fence. So they said not to be alarmed if you see him in the bushes outside the enclosure. We weren't that lucky. But we did get to see him climb around with his mother.


Hippo booties. They have a brand new hippo exhibit. It is very nice, but of course all the hippos did was stand there.

Gopher even liked the zoo. He laughed when the baby goat licked his hand in the petting zoo and he really liked the train ride. But his favorite animal was his moose.

Happy Birthday Texas

This past weekend was the Texas Independence Day Celebration at Washington on the Brazos. We usually go on Sunday for the Texas-size birthday cake, but this year we had to go on Saturday. The weather was absolutely perfect and Goose and Bear had a great time. They made corn husk dolls and danced and got see what life was like in the eighteen hundreds.

I tried to convince them to push the cultivator behind the oxen, but they weren't interested. They were able to see what children in those days had to do. They were able to grind corn and wash clothes.

When we got home, they wanted to try washing their own clothes. So I got them a washboard (works great on poopy baby clothes) a washtub and some soap. They washed their clothes and Gopher's. By the time they finished washing and hanging they decided they didn't want to have to do that every day. It would take too long and they didn't think they got the clothes clean enough. So after they had their fun, I rewashed everything in our modern convenience the washing machine.