Mama meets boy

In a matter of hours my sweet friend Becky will have her hands on her baby boy in Ethiopia! She is doing something unbelievable. It has been two long years of waiting for her and her husband Mark as they pursued an international adoption. My favorite part of their story? They chose this. This was not an after they tried everything else to have a biological baby and failed decision. Nope. This was a why even try to have a biological baby decision. Adoption.. a first choice. amazing. This sweet baby boy is hours from meeting his forever mommy and daddy. His parents who will love him and hold him and teach him to drive vehicles places they were never intended to go. (you can get to know them for more on their off roading adventures). Thats what we can call this: Off road parenting. Not many would choose it. But these two. They are amazing. I am honored to love them and their boy. Honored to be able to tell their story. Honored to get the emails from AFRICA. I am not. sleeping.  I am as excited as when any of my kids were on the way. Well maybe not really. But I am as sleepless!! Pray for them as this will be a challenging week. They meet him three times for an hour each time.. then they have to come home without him. For an undeclared amount of time. Pray for quickness in the courts. Pray for fast paper trails. Pray for sensitive hearts!! Pray for this mama and daddy and their long flight home. Pray for this sweet boy. Pray for health and safety and pray for God to prepare his heart for the challenges to come. And pray for the joy that will come! OH the Joy that is coming!!

a wild day at Wild Days

Yesterday we attended an even at Sea World called Wild Days with Jack Hanna. Community reps from different conservation agencies in San Antonio come and to top it off Jack Hanna comes with a variety of his animal friends :-). We had no idea how wild our day was going to be!We started our morning early. I had intentions of waking up and feeding Silas at 6:30.. so he helped by waking up at 6. Breakfast was a King cake. Because it is Mardi Gras season, and well, I wanted a King Cake!

 

 We hit the road earlier than we expected despite a crazy storm that popped up. CRAZY wind and rain and even thunder. The weather for San Anonio was supposed to be better though, so we headed on out and sure enough the rain stopped before we even got to the major high way. Everything was going great. The boys each had their electronic distraction unit of choice, Silas was sleeping like an angel and I was having great conversation with my husband. About 40 miles out of San Antonio Lucas avoided a big pile of hay. I remember thinking "gosh, its good he avoided that. There could be a nail or something in it." Moments later we hear a whoosh sound followed by a thumputhumputhumputhumputhumputhumpu. "No Way" says the Man. Yup. Flat tire. Not just a nail.. no.. completely devastated flat tire. We then spent about ten minutes searching the van for the spare. Because we know we have one. But its still new to us.. so it took a while. After finding it Lucas got us all set and we changed our gps destination to Discount Tires. They actually worked fairly quickly, but we lost about three hours of our day at Sea World. When we got there we found out that we missed Shamu and the other big show was canceled. So we did other things we normally do not get to. We fed the dolphins. So. Much. Fun. We all got to touch and pet them! Not what I thought they would feel like! After catching the Sea Lion show and viewing the penguins (Ayden's favorite!) we got to the special Jack Hanna show early. He was awesome as I knew he would be. We got to see crazy odd animals like an African Procupine, tree sloth, cheetah and a lynx. Then we stood in line for autographs. Jack was kind and humble and patient. We watched the man sign autographs for almost three hours straight! (before the show, after the show and at dinner).  Dinner was a blast! The BBQ was yummy (toally making up for the crud we had here a few weeks ago) and the animal handlers and Jack were right there in the picnic area! We got to wander around and take pictures with some amazing animals. Such fun memories! And the kids actually learned things. This morning Balin took his lovey lion and hung him by the feet from the fridge handle. "Look mommy! He's standing like a sloth!" Great day. And worth a new tire!

Fennec Fox

black and white Tegu



my favorite pic of the day! Silas and this owl had a serious stare down. I'm sure they were both thinking "could I fit that in my mouth?"



Dinner with Jungle Jack

When I was a little girl I wanted to grow up to be a zoo keeper. Specifically, up until my sophomore year of high school, I wanted to be a marine biologist. My sophmore year I took honors chemistry and realized that science and I were only going to be friends as long as math was not involved. Unfortunately, math is involved. So I became a mommy instead. I would like to point out the obvious that being a mommy is a whole lot like being a zoo keeper. I design habitats, create meal plans, research odd behaviors, create enrichments, raise funds from sponsors ( known as daddy)  and on most days clean up poop as well. I've been obsessed with zoos my entire life and many of my favorite memories are attached to them. Riding a camel in California, visiting the polar bears in Colorado, first date with my husband in Vienna, Austria (remind me to blog about that one sometime). For Christmas this year we were given season tickets to Sea World! Its about two and a half hours from us, but since we don't need to buy tickets every time we can go for special events with minimal guilt. This weekend a VERY SPECIAL EVENT is happening and I could not be more excited. Like school girl giddy. Like giddy as my children when they get to buy a new pez dispenser giddy. I am going on saturday to Sea World.. To have dinner with this man.  

Jack Hanna. King of the tv zoo men. Before we had the crocodile hunter, or Jeff Corwin or the dog whisperer.. we had Jack Hanna. Now I'm sure he will want to visit with some of the other ahem, hundreds of other, people there, but I'm okay with sharing. My husband thinks I'm a loon. Thats okay too. I told him last night that my greatest fantasy right now would be getting a picture of Jack with a monkey on one arm, and Silas on the other. I know. I'll try to be cool. But I'll be honest. I'm having trouble concentrating. Jungle Jack. at a pic nic.. with ME.