Our Family Stay-cation!

After Shaun was away for 3 weeks for work, we decided to take a few days off work and have some family time! Unfortunately, for the first few days we were all sick with a stomach bug Evelyn brought home from daycare! :( But, after we recovered we decided to explore some of the local features of Oklahoma!


GW Exotic Animal Park:
Just south of the city, this is a safe-haven for exotic animals. All the animals in their possession have been rescued. They mainly have large cats (tigers, lions, cougars, etc) but also have some reptiles, monkeys, wolfs and birds. We went on a behind-the-scenes tour which allowed us to get even closer to the animals, including playing with a baby tiger cub!!

Evelyn had a chance to pet the baby tiger cub!

This Lion, named Elvis, was completely preoccupied with Evelyn's stroller!
They warned us that the cats could "spray" through the fence. We found out the hard way that it was true! A female tiger decided to aim towards us, but only got the roof of our stroller! Yuk!
Tigers are the only felines that enjoy water! This large cat was just soaking in his water bucket!
This lion was laying on his back just staring at us! Every once in a while he'd lick his chops---maybe we looked tasty!


Arbuckle Wilderness: Also south of the city, this park lets you drive through and feed the animals from your car! We learned very quickly that the animals have no fear of our 4-wheeled vehicles and that they will steal entire cups of animal food!!
isn't he cute?
The giraffes were our favorites! They had to lean WAY down to get the food! :)
Exhibit A: Zebra stealing the entire cup of food! I guess he has stripes for a reason--he's a criminal!
Evelyn learning pointers from the monkeys!!


Our little girl is growing up so fast!! 10 months old!
The view from the front seat---our little girl is tuckered out from all the fun!



Oklahoma City Science Museum: This is really designed for older children, but Shaun and I had a blast playing with all the displays! Evelyn was able to get in on a little bit of the action! We also took in a movie in the Dome theater! It made us all feel like we were in the ocean with the fish! :)

Our daily life

I decided to take some pictures of our daily activities over the weekend. It seems like we often forget to appreciate some our routines because they just become habits. Evelyn is changing so quickly that I wanted to be able to look back at some "normal" days and remember what our life was like. :)





This is the adorable face that greets me in the mornings! Usually she's pretty happy, unless I've made her wait too long for the breakfast bottle!
Life behind bars!

I guess the crib tastes yummy!

This was just too cute to resist!

Our favorite new hobby! Taking all the cookbooks off the shelf! Yes, I could move them to another location, but I'd rather have to reorganize my cookbooks daily than for her to move on to the even bigger temptation in the kitchen: the dogfood! They seems to distract her for now, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time!

Which book should I read next?

Bathtime!

More Stuff!

Today I decided to have a little outing to the park! I know how much she loves to swing and I was also hopign to get a couple cute pics in this outfit. Swinging went well, but when it came time for the photo shoot she was more interested in eating the grass!! I think I'll try again when my assistant (aka Daddy) is available to distract her! :)

We love hand-me-downs! :) We are blessed to have LOTS of girl cousins and even two girl neighbors! Kristi sent me some clothes last week including this very tiny bikini! I couldn't resist putting it on her right away! Even though it claims to be 6-12 months, it was rather big on her. It wouldn't surprise me if she could fit it next summer too!

It looks like she's practicing to water ski!

Future bikini model!

Evelyn's Latest tricks!

She LOVES loves loves LOVES eating table food! I think this is what she was waiting for all along! She is now too good for her baby food and will rarely eat it now! So far the only food she hasn't liked too much is bananas--weird kid! :)

She likes to help unload the groceries!

This was her first attempt at getting onto her feet. I think since the shelf was low she was able to stand up a little easier. Now she's quite the pro and can pull herself up with just about anything! This was also her trying to help me organize the DVDs. She eventually was able to sit on the bottom shelf as if she was one of the DVDs! :)

Her BFF Sydnee loves to come over and play! Even though Sydnee can walk with ease, she doesn't like to make Evelyn feel left out, so she will crawl on the ground with her! They are too funny together! Whenever we walk to Sydnee's house Evelyn knows right away who lives there and gets VERY excited! I made the mistake of stopping once when they weren't home and she cried the whole way back! She wanted to play!!

Sydnee helping recover the missing ball!