Yellow Belly

On Sunday, Ray decided to get the kids out of the house while I caught up on sleep. His cousin Bryce came over with 2 of his sons, Jake and Cody. Our neighbor Alex came along too. They headed out to the drag strip with the 4 wheeler and Nehemiah's dirt bike.

Everyone laughed when they saw Bryce trying to race the Raptor against a car. But Bryce is a rider! He's the one who taught Ray to ride motorcycles. Bryce spanked those cars! He beat them so bad, he had to turn around to look back at them!

Bryce was able to finish the 1/8 mile strip in about 9 seconds.

This was the fastest car out there. It was able to finish the 1/8 mile strip in about 5 seconds:

They spent some time admiring all the show cars and bikes:

There was also a grassy area where you could ride. It wasn't very big, about the size of a football field. But they took turns riding the dirt bike and Raptor.

Ft. Worth Zoo

After being cooped up in the house due to weather. We got out the first day we could. Ray and I surprised the kids by taking a trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo. None of the kids have ever been to this zoo, so it was quite a treat! And we've been studying big cats so a trip to the zoo was very appropriate.

Samara loves pink so of course she loved the pink flamingo. We saw several of them napping. They were each standing on one leg with their head tucked under their wing. We tried standing that way but determined we would never be able to sleep that way, let alone stay that way for over a minute. We also thought it was funny that their knees bend backward.

Then we saw the gorilla. He looked us in the eye! But I felt sorry for him. He looked like he wanted to get away from all the people staring at him.

Here's a pic of Samara and the lion. He was really active despite the fact that we just learned that lions sleep up to 20 hours a day. He did a lot of roaring! Really cool.

We were all horrified to see that this rhino was eating his own poop!

Here's some pics of the kids climbing on African Termite Mounds.

Trent was able to climb up on the tallest one.


This orangutan was so interactive. Every time someone would walk by with food in their hands she would reach out to them as if she were asking for a bite.

Everyone was excited to see the cheetah, since we recently learned they can run up to 70 mph. Cheetahs are the fastest land animal. After we learned this fact in our homeschool, we wanted to see how fast we could run so we headed to the track with our stopwatch. We ran one lap and timed it. Then (assuming that we would be able to keep up that same pace for the remaining 3 laps) we multiplied our time for 1 lap x 4. Then we divided by 60 minutes. Here are our times:

Isaiah 10.5 mph

Malachi 9.5 mph

Samara 7.1 mph

Seth 0 mph (Seth decided not to finish any laps. He was coming in last so he turned around and walked back to me with tears in his eyes. My poor baby!)

None of the kangaroos were up and hopping. They were all relaxing for a nap in the sun.

Isaiah and Malachi on a komodo dragon:

Samara and Seth on a komodo dragon:

Let's see: who can look the coolest sitting in this rocking chair?

I wanted to take a picture of Seth sitting on this crocodile but he was way too concerned about this girl "who wouldn't move" so he could sit at the front!

I finally got some of the kids in the picture. But the girl is still there!

This is the only picture I got of the bear. There were actually 2 bears in the habitat. The really cool part was that the zoo staff came by to feed the bears while we were there. They have this little tunnel that's shaped like a hollow log and they put food in there to draw the bear to the tunnel. Small kids can climb inside one side of the tunnel to see the bear up close. (Don't worry, there's a cage in the middle of the tunnel to prevent your child from becoming the bear food!) That was really cool.

Up close with a mountain lion! We just watched a show on tv about a man who was attacked by a mountain lion. Scary!

Look at the size of those paws!

Here's the jaguar. He was pacing back and forth looking into the cage next to him which held the coyotes. Isn't he beautiful?

Next we saw the peregine falcon. It was awesome because she wasn't in a cage. She was being held by a zookeeper who was able to answer all out questions about her species. Peregrine falcons are the fastest animal on the planet. When they are diving they can go up to 200 mph!

The zookeeper held her on a special glove to keep his hands protected from her talons. He said she only weighs about 2.5 lbs.

Isaiah's "wingspan" is the size of a barn owl.

By this time we were getting tired. So we all loaded up on the train to ride back to the zoo entrance. We could see this longhorn from our position on the train.

SNOW!!!

It's an unusal thing to have snow in Texas, especially in March. So even though it was 10pm, we got all dressed up and went outside to play in it. Seth came running in the bedroom to tell me that "Santa brought the snow!!!!" Here's a picture of the Suburban:

And one of the toys we left outside:

Here's the four youngest playing in the snow:

Here's Samara making a snowball and Seth throwing a snowball at Daddy:

Here's Isaiah and Malachi holding the biggest snowballs they've ever made:

Here's Nehemiah and Susanna (girl who lives across the street):

The rest of the neighborhood came out to play too. Here's a picture of Alex and Trent. Those big boys were throwing snowballs as hard as they could. I tried to stay out of the line of fire.

Look at Seth's rosy cheeks:

We didn't stay out very long. It was time to come in and dry off and get ready for bed.