Funfilled Weekend!

On Saturday we decided to use our last airmiles certificates and head to the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

First stop was the lion area to watch the lion feeding. Funny story: as we pulled into our parking lot I recognized someone I went to highschool with. By the time we'd unpacked and gotten to the gates he and his family were no where to be seen. I took these pictures of Elisabeth and me without being able to see much of anything except that she was in the frame...later when I looked at the pictures this friend of mine was in some of the pictures and his baby was in some of the others. See?? Cute, chubby little baby:

This guy wasn't too hungry, but right at the end he came and ate out of the keeper's hands. So cute (and totally terrifying too!)

Traditional picture on the giraffe!


The wallabies are so cute. Too bad I always forget and call them kangaroos. It's funny how many animals we moms misname when we're at the zoo with our kids. Oops!

This was awesome. Turtle one was minding his own business, chomping away on the grass. Then turtle number two (the one on the left hand side) comes marching over...like so:

walks straight up to turtle number one:

They engage in 10 seconds worth of a shoving match...
Then turtle 2 wanders back off (and into their house) and turtle 1 goes back to chomping.

Crazy.

This is a capybara. In middle school choir we used to sing a song about a jaguar and some capybara. I never guessed they looked like this. There used to be quite a number of them hanging out on the hill, but last time we were there we didn't see any and this weekend we only saw two. Strange. But I'm glad to see them again.

Hippos lying back to back and enjoying the sunshine.


They had face painting by donation so Elisabeth got a crown and princess jewels:
And David got tiger stripes.
That night we went to Cody and Kathi's for a bbq. No pictures except this one of Jade's fort.

Playing out in the driveway.

Sunday afternoon we tried to head to the river for a fire. Everyone in the area must have had the same idea because it was PACKED. So we drove to Fort Langley, which was also packed, and had a picnic there.




My sweet boy.

All weekend he complained about not liking kindergarten and not wanting to go back. I didn't think much of it since we were having a fun weekend (figuring he just didn't want to stop playing to go back to school) but this morning he told me everyone in his class laughed at him last week and it made him cry. He's a sensitive little chappy, but after some questioning I decided it wasn't too serious...but I was still worried about how this week would go. After all, we had house guests last week so David was probably just overtired.

Anyway, today he bounded out of school in a much happier mood. Things went well and he talked and answered questions in show and share so he was much more positive about school.

Still, lately I feel like I need to be more purposeful about my parenting. Anyone have any parenting books that revolutionized your life? Let me know in the comments section below!
After lunch we headed to the train museum...there was a volunteer working who pretty much dragged us in for a tour. It was the first time we'd been inside the station in all the times we've been there; it's pretty cool.


I can only look at a model train set so many times. So while the rest of the family wandered through the cars looking at the museum-y stuff in there, I took pictures.








Lovely first weekend of fall. And maybe we'll get to have our fire later this week...