My fascination with giraffes, and other Mother's Day moments

Here are the amazing little boys who have changed my life and made the past 6 Mother's Days extra special! They continue to teach me patience, selflessness, compassion, honesty, and how deep love can actually be. I am such a motherhood work in progress. I want to be better for these guys. I am thrilled to be growing each year and learning how to love them better. They mean the world to me!

My special request for Mother's Day this year was to go to the zoo. I love the zoo, and am especially obsessed with giraffes. They are so amazing and, I think, quite beautiful. (Don't even try to pretend that there are no strange giraffe-loving-type quirks in your personalities friends!)

We went on Saturday, rather than Sunday, because we saw a weather forecast that looked less than favorable on Sunday. It was a very wise choice! The weather was perfect for a zoo trip Saturday and we had a wonderful time. Sunday was chilly and it rained, nonstop, all day.

K and I feeding the giraffes. He loved it and giggled hysterically the whole time. I may have mentioned this just a few times before, but he has the best giggle!

Jay, up close and personal with Mr. long neck

Giraffes are cool, even if they aren't real. This would really match the decor in my bed room.

It was fun to have my mother in law share in our Mother's Day outing. She is special to me for many reasons. At the top of my list is my thankfulness for the wonderful man whom she had a part in raising. He is the most respectful, sensitive, and caring guy I have ever met and I love him with my whole heart. It would be neglectful of me not to hold in high esteem the one who introduced him to Jesus, the one who taught him so many things.

My mother in law was a part of each day of my Mother's Day weekend. Friday night I accompanied her, and Dave's sister, to her church's mother daughter banquet. I missed my mom through out the weekend, but it was nice to be able to enjoy these other women who are precious to me. The picture above is Utility Girl (Dave's sister, who is also one of my "you know way to much about me and love me any way" friends. My sister in laws have a way of becoming that kind of friend.), my mother in law is in the middle, and I am on the right. It was a fun evening. We also had my mother and father in law over for lunch Sunday afternoon.

So, that was a little unplanned rabbit trail, now back to the zoo: K kept telling us that he wanted to see a c-o-w (He has an obsession with spelling right now... we love it!). They had a petting zoo with a few farm animals, but no cow. Well, we finally saw this very large plastic version and he was so excited...until the stroller was right next to it and he saw how big it was. I tried not to let him see me laugh, because he was quite traumatized, but it was really funny to see him squirming and freaking out over this plastic cow. "I want back in the stroller!" He was very adamant about that! As you can see in the picture, he still wasn't 100% sure that it was all okay once Dave set him on it. After much convincing that it was very plastic and very not breathing, his cute giggle came back. He is still talking about the great c-o-w. "It was just a toy mom! But it was a big toy!"

One of the really neat things that we did for K this time was to take close up pictures of each animal with our digital camera and then show them to K on the LCD screen. Last time we went to the zoo, K didn't really enjoy it, due to his poor eye sight. What fun is the zoo if you can't see the animals? It was really special for us to see K being able to participate this time. Our goal (after we purchase a little bit more techno-geeky equipment) is to eventually hook up our video camera to our portable DVD player. That will allow K to hold the DVD player as close as he needs to as we feed the images we are seeing into the DVD player.

There were lots of really great animals at the zoo. I just realized that of the six pictures I posted two of them are of fake animals. That could lead you to believe that our zoo was really wussy and fake. I have tons of pictures of very real, very wild animals, but I thought you all would be more interested in the people pictures. :)

Our weekend was a mixture of warm/fuzzy, sweet/cuddly, difficult/weepy, and harsh/reality, moments. How's that for conflictions? :) It really was special, but in an effort to squelch any bit of false pretense I have to say that I had my rough spots throughout the weekend as well. Despite that, my heart overflows with thanksgiving. I am so blessed!