1.  Should I eat more healthy??  Of course.  Is there anyone who shouldn’t???  Am I going to? Unlikely.  You can see what I eat at childsplate.com.  It’s usually not that healthy.  I have never been and never will be the type of person who likes salad unless there’a really good sweet and/or tangy dressing.  I don’t really like vegetables either.  Shhhhh.  Don’t you tell Mina that!!  (Believe me, I hear about it all the time from my parents!).  I believe in moderation, anyway.  I can’t eat a lot of anything, no matter how much I like it.  I think I’ll be alright.

2.  Should I exercise?  Notice I didn’t say “excercise more.”  That’s because I don’t excercise.  Santa brought Ogre and me a Wii Fit.  The only reason I did anything on it was so that I could beat Ogre’s scores.  I’m competitive like that.  My heart is NOT in it for the right reasons.  We went ice skating the other day because Mina has been wanting to go.  I had to drag Benji around the skating rink with one arm for MAYBE thirty minutes.  That thirty minutes of exertion has left me with a sore arm for THREE DAYS NOW!!  Sheesh.  That’s a lot of pain for thirty minutes of “working out!”  I’m scared to know what pain feels like after a real work out.  (Those Wii Fit things that I did were yoga moves, not as painful).

What other common resolutions are there?

-Work less?  Not going to happen.

-Smile more? For no apparent reason?  That’s just crazy.

-Read more? Did you see the work less one?  If I’m working I probably don’t have time to lounging around reading. 

-Spend less/Get out of debt?  Yeah, I’d love to do this one, hence the inability to work less.  A few months ago, I decided to start “no frills” spending, which means I wouldn’t buy anything we didn’t “NEED.”  But, you know, “NEED” is very subjective. 

-Spend more time with friends and family?  Does that have to be a resolution??? Isn’t that a given??

-I don’t smoke.  I don’t drink heavily or even moderately.  Maybe I’ll resolve to start so next year I can make it my resolution.

This year, I decided it would be fun to chop down our Christmas Tree.  As usual, I got great recommendations from DFW Area Moms, which led us to the Walls Family Farm.  It’s a little bit of a drive, but not too bad since one of my hospitals is in Rockwall.  The tree farm is in Quinlan.

We asked Grandpoo and Oma to come with us.  Actually, they drove with Ogre and the kids because I was on call and was rounding in the morning and not even sure I’d be able to make it.

The Walls Family Farm is huge and seemed well-organized.  We got off at the first stop, although some of the mroe seasoned patrons advised us that there was further to go if wanted.  We realized what they meant when we started wandering to find our tree!  Of course, Mina and Benji were not impressed at all.  They were more interested in finding sticks on the ground. 

Ogre was very concerned with finding the “perfect” tree. 

I nixed the first one, saying it was too big.  We argued on the height, and finally decided to bypass the first “perfect” tree.  Onward we walked.  And walked, and looked, and looked, until we found the perfect tree.  We were very proud to find this tree:

Ogre was hard at work sawing the tree down while Grandpoo made sure the tree would not be falling on any of our heads.  I cheered Ogre on!

Timber!!

Afterwards, we enjoyed some cider while the kids played in the play area.  Ogre and Grandpoo went off to tie the tree to the truck, which took longer than sawing the tree down!!

We took our tree home and decorated it with our family ornaments and gifted ornaments.

We have a tradition of each member of the family (including our pups) gets to pick out one ornament and we have an family ornament each year.  The ornament can just be something cool that someone likes or have a special “meaning.”  I try to alternate.  Anyway, it’s fun to reminisce as we put ornaments on the tree.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

There’s the family one from our trip to Las Vegas for my dad’s 60th birthday party.

And one of my favorites, from our last year in Tennessee…

One year, Ogre bought me this ornament as a gift so we can remember each every year the wonderful cabbage patch “doll” I received as a child from my dad, the jokester.  You can read about that here.  Yeah, it really puts me in the Christmas spirit to open old wounds!

Then, there was the year Pogi (our dog) almost choked on a chicken thigh and I had to give him the heimleich -Ogre says he didn’t know that I had that kind of strength!  Hell, you better believe I’m saving my first baby’s life.  I swear he was going towards the light!

Then there’s the year Pogi used an adirondack chair to jump off a second story balcony when we were vacationing in Panama City beach.  Yeah, Pogi has nine lives.

This year, Mina and I got our ornaments when we were in Hawaii.  I just love Hawaii and it was Mina’s first trip to Hawaii…

Ogre and I suck at parenting and got Benjamin an ornament for his first trip to the circus…except this year wasn’t his first year to go to the circus.  It’s his second.  Doh!

Ogre picked a giraffe to remind us of our trip to Fossil Rim.  He and Mina experienced having a giraffe eat out of their hands.

That trip was such a fun time for the whole family and Mina mentioned that she LOVED the T-rex (even though it wasn’t actually a T-rex at the park), that we got a cool T-rex ornament for the family ornament!

For the dogs this year, we got a cute one for Pogi, who even though he turns 12 in February, thinks he’s still a puppy.  And an ornanment that plays “Bad to the Bone” for our dog Jonas who has ruined almost every piece of furniture in the house, as well as almost killing one of my favorite plants and trying to kill my new dragon tree.

And, this, my friends, is this year’s Tannenbaum…

WOWOWEE!!!!

This weekend, we were totally submerged in my Filipino culture!!  Even my very white husband Ogre and half-white-in-genetics, full-blooded-Pinoy-in-spirit children. 

My parents watch a Filipino variety gameshow called Wowowee!  every weekday.  They subscribe to the Filipino channel, so if you’re not a subscriber, you probably haven’t seen it.

It’s kind of a crazy show.  It’s filmed in the Philippines and they have all kinds of contestants on it that are themed for the biggest prizes.  They’ll have a group of people with some common occupation or quality of life, anywhere from the person who digs through trash to survive to government workers and beauty pageant winners.  Then there are other games where the contestants are chosen from the audience.

For some of these poor Filipinos, it’s a chance to win money or an opportunity.  At one point, one of the big prizes was a taxi. Filipinos will stand in line for days for the opporunity to be part of the show and have those chances.  And they will ACT A FOOL once they get in to be selected.  See, that’s how you are chosen, you have to be very animated and dance all crazy, then you might get chosen to participate in one of the game shows.

The host of the show is Willie Revillame and I don’t get the attraction, but Filipinos love this guy and always comment on how “handsome” he is.  Really? Handsome? 

The ladies on the show, of course, are very beautiful and the dancers, scantily clad.  In fact, when Mina has seen me standing there in a bra, she has said, “Mommy!  You look like one of the dancers on Wowowee!”  Well, not quite, but I have on about as much as on as they do. 

When my parents heard they were coming to town, there was no question that they were going.  The minute tickets went on sale, I was sitting there getting tickets for them.  The best I could get was 3rd row. 

Ogre then decided that we should go, too. Really?  Us go, too?  Two unruly kids? You, not understanding a lick of Tagalog? 

Okay, we’ll go.

So we went.  Here is Mina’s face when we told her we’d be going to see Wowowee: 

We drove 4 hours to Houston and first stop?  Goldilocks Cafe and Bakery -a Filipino restaurant.

The last time I ate here I was interviewing for medical school at UT Houston.  That’s been quite a long time.  It was packed today, presumable with other Wowowee attendees.  I asked our waiter about it and he said it’s been a steady rush all day.  Turns out the “other” Filipino restaurant is closed on Sundays, man, they’re missing out on some good business!

They had a buffet today, which would suit us well.  I was excited to see a favorite not often had delicacy.  Sarsa for the lechon (roasted pork).  Sarsa is pureed liver with sugar and vinegar.  What??!?! That’s not appetizing to you??  Come on.

Here let me make it more appetizing.  The last time I had this was when my mom made it for my high school graduation party.  Ogre and I were dating at the time and he was visiting from Plano for the party (I was living in Killeen at the time).  He walked in just in time to see my mom throwing the liver on to the electric stove top to seer them and then pureeing them in the blender.  He didn’t like it then and I made him try it again, and he doesn’t like it now.

I LOVE IT.  It’s really a perfect compliment to the lechon.  And my sweet Mina, we let her try and she LOVED it also.  Two discriminating palettes can’t be wrong. 

Ogre stuck to the more generic meat dishes and noodle dishes.  He did try some weird dish, I, as a Filipina have never heard of and liked it.  Chicken Pastel, I think it was called.  I didn’t need it, I wanted to fill up on lechon and sarsa.  And I also ate some diniguan to celebrate the weekend of Filipino culture. 

What’s diniguan, you ask.  Pork made in a pork blood stew.  I’m not kidding, it’s actually pretty tasty if you can get over the fact that you’re eating blood stew.  I can.  Ogre can’t.  I did not make him try it again (for the record, he has in the past and doesn’t like it).  I’ll only eat it if I can tell that did not add pig intestine lining.  I can’t eat it like that.  But I digress.

After our late lunch, we headed back to the hotel to rest up before WOWOWEE!

We decided we’d walk to the arena thinking it was just a hop, skip and a jump away.  We could see a round building from our hotel, which is just adjacent to Reliant Park.

Well, we got to that round building called the RELIANT ASTRODOME.  Well, shit. I found a map and we’d be walking another quarter mile to the Reliant Arena. 

And once we got there a little after 5:30 (supposedly the show would start at 6pm), there was a ridiculously long line that we had to stand in. I guess that they wanted to have the true Filipino experience.

When we finally got in, we parted ways.  We went to our crappy seats and my parents went to their floor seats. 

The kids were very excited to see my parents as they walked across the floor.  Benji wanted to go with Lolo and practically threw a tantrum when they walked off. 

Ogre took that cue to get some smoothies for the kids.  That was a major hit with them. 

I think that we actually got in to the arena around 6pm.  Perfect timing right?  Nope, not when you’re on Filipino time. This is a running joke among Filipinos.  Filipino Time is like Hawaiian Time.  Whenever. I cannot stand Filipino Time, I’m to anal. 

So here we sat and at 7:30, the show STILL had not started.  Have you ever sat in ridiculously cramped seating with a cranky, hasn’t napped 19 month old and 5 year old? Yeah, it sucks.

I think the show finally started at around 8pm. 

Benji was out by the time the second act came out.  Not so much for me anymore.

Wowowee is particularly fun because it is very interactive with the audience and their dances that they do every show, so everyone knows them…including my children.  Mina has danced “Boom Tarat Tarat” since she was two and “Doo Doo Doo Da Da Da” since that became a hit.

She danced every time the dancers came out and did numbers.  I think she had a blast.  And Ogre was the one dancing with her since I was stuck holding the Benj.

 

Throughout the show, I had to translate for Ogre what was going on.  I don’t know how the show kept his interest at all…aside from the scantily clad Filipinas, of course.

Benji finally woke up and was totally cranky pants. Ogre took him out to the hall while I continued to watch the show.  They were in the middle of their game shows when they went out. 

Ogre missed the best part.  Well, not good for the contestant, but pretty entertaining.

The biggest game is called Pera or Bayong.  The contestant picks a basket that might contain a prize or might contain something worthless.  Willie offers the contestant an increasing amount of money in lieu of getting the prize (here, it was a car).  I was watching on the big screen as she was yelling “Bayong” (for the prize) and Willie’s shouting “2500, 3000!” and I see that her crotch is dark.  Hmmm, that’s weird.

But then, WIllie calls her on it.  “What’s going on?” He asks her in Tagalog, “The floor is wet.”  She tells him, “I peed.”  Yeah, she peed!!  I laughed and felt sorry for her all at the same time.  She hid behind the red basket she’d chosen for her prize.  They gave her a towel to wrap around her waist and wiped up the floor.  After making fun of her for a good 5 minutes (she was a good sport about it), they continued on. 

She continued to insist on Bayong, and good thing, too, because she actually won the car.  So she didn’t pee herself in front of thousands of people live and in front of an international audience once this airs, and I’m sure this will air.

Ogre came back in about this time and I seriously thought it would be over soon.  Mina wanted to go home and Benji was still cranky pants.  Ogre decided he’d take them back to the hotel.

I was left by my lonesome.  I think it was about 10 o’clock about this time.  It wasn’t over. 

There was more singing and a monologue from Phokwang, Willie came out to talk and sing some more.  Ogre called me to tell me about his horrible experience and to tell me that he would be getting the kids some food and picking us up at the arena.  I warned him that the show wasn’t over. 

Next came Charice Pempengco, the you tube sensation who has been featured on Ellen and Oprah and sang with Celine Dion.  She did not sing one or two songs, but THREE songs.  It’s 11:15 now and it’s still not over.  It’s crazy.  I actually was just standing in the halls at this point and ran into my dad.  We could hear that it was ending soon so he waited with me in the halls for my mom to come out.  I don’t know how it ended because my mom just came out after Willie was up there for 15 minutes. 

It was the show that went on forever.  Maybe it’s still going on?

And the horrible experience??  Ogre took the kids back to the hotel (probably a mile) and found that the gate was locked to get into the hotel.  Noting that it would take another 1/2 mile to walk back across the parking lot and around the block to get to the front of the hotel.  Benji was apparently shivering from the cold.  He decided that he’d walk to the far gate where Mina could fit under the fence.  He got her to crawl under but Benji wouldn’t go.  He ended up sliding Benji through on his back, telling Mina to hold his hand on the other side while he climbed over the fence.  My mom found this story hilarious and Mina thought she was a spy.

I am not ashamed to admit that it’s freakish, but I went to my doctor and together we tried to determine anything tangible that might be a contributing factor to my headaches.  I was told to see the dentist, which I did and got an A+.  I know that I clench my jaw and grind my teeth at night.  I went and got a mouthguard, but my headaches were WORSE with that piece of crap.  Nixed that.  Antibiotics, mucinex and sudafed in case I had sinusitis.  Check.  Not much difference.  The only thing I haven’t done is go to the eye doctor to make sure my vision hasn’t changed.

BUT, one thing I did not discuss with my doctor was another theory of mine.  That my hair is too heavy.

OK, ladies, you know what I’m talking about.  When you put your hair back in a ponytail or a bun and it hurts your head because it’s TOO HEAVY!

So, I decided to get my haircut last week.  And since more days than not last week I had a headache, it was not out of the ordinary that on the day that I’d be headed to the salon, I had a headache. 

I told Ming to cut it off.  All of it.  He thought I was crazy at first.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I answered in my fit of migraine rage.  “Cut it off.”

And so he did.  And so it was gone.  He cut off over 18 inches.  The floor was covered in enough hair to fur several chihuahuas. 

And here I sit with my short hair.  

My short hair that is a lot more of a headache than when it was long because I now have to blow dry and style my hair, losing the luxury of not having to with my long lovely locks.  And, honestly, I’m not going to do that most mornings, I just don’t have the time.  Sleep vs. hairstyling.  Sleep wins in my world.

Recent comments:

“Oh…you cut your hair…”

“Why did you do that?”

“Do you like it?:

“I’d be too scared to do that.”

“It looks…cute.”

“You look like a teenager, an even younger teenager than before.”

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

Thanks, friends.

I have to tell you, though, that I am thankful for the ability to work and enjoy what I do.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve also had experiences that make me appreciate my children even more than I did previously.

I have had the conversation about being a pediatrician many times.  Sometimes, I’ll hear, “Gosh, I could never deal with sick kids, that seems so difficult!” and I’ll cheerily reply, “Oh, most kids bounce back and get better!  It’s actually a very happy profession.”  (I’m not a Heme/Onc or PICU doctor, mind you.) Well, my partner normally covers our rehab hospital, but since she’s been on maternity leave, I did my first stint out there.

It really makes you take account of what you have and how quickly things can change because most of these kids were happily going about their normal day and were healthy and normal until some life changing event occurred -car accidents, gun shot wounds, an infection- changed their and their families lives forever.  The parents that I met were awe-inspiring and some of the kids had such a positive outlook, it was almost surreal. 

I urge you to hug your kids and your family a little tighter today.  If nothing else, it sure does feel good!

So, I’m back, stronger and more reflective from my experiences these past few weeks, and thankful for wonderful family and friends, and, even all that hard work I’m enduring!

My poor sweet Benji.

I was at my parents’ house today and they are repainting one of the rooms at their house.  I came across some pictures and was looking through them and laughed when I saw a picture of Benji with his plastic shoes.  And I’m not talking about crocs.

Benji is obsessed with shoes and wearing shoes.  I think this is why.  He spends the majority of his days at my parents’ house and, like I’ve talked about here before, they do not want my children to walk around with barefeet…especially outside.

Apparently, they’ll go to great lengths when his neglectful parents forget his shoes and they want to go outside.

So, here is their solution.  Put his feet in plastic sandwich bags and tape ‘em on.  No problem.

I remember when Ogre picked him up that day.  I hopped in the car because for some reason they were picking me up and Ogre nodded his head back towards Benji’s feet.  He hadn’t taken the plastic bags off yet because he wanted me to see.  I guess he thought I wouldn’t believe him.  And I probably wouldn’t have had I not seen it with my own eyes.

And maybe you wouldn’t have believed me, except now that you, too, can see this with your own eyes:

Our day trip this past weekend took us to the small town of Glen Rose, Texas, population ~2000.

Fossil Rim

The first place we hit was Fossil Rim Park, which is wildlife park where you can feed the animals from your car as you tour the grounds.  I had done my research and found that they keep the place open for 2 hours after they let the last car in.  One would deduce that it then takes about 2 hours to get through the park. 

My research also led to the discovery that, indeed, we had a coupon in our Entertainment Passbook for One FREE Child Admission.  Perfect.  Benjamin is still free because he could care less about what happens around him.  It took us about 2 hours to get there from Plano including a quick stop for lunch.  Ogre went in and bought the admission as well as a bag of animal feed that cost us about 8 bucks.

The first animal we meet is an ostrich.  First, let me tell you that I’ve only had bad experiences with ostriches, I think they’re mean SOBs.  One bit my palm when I fed it at the State Fair and I never tried to feed or interact with one again. So here we are, face to face with another ostrich, it’s the first animal we meet on our drive, so everyone’s excited to feed the animal.  This ostrich was not hear to play.  He wanted some food, he knew the drill and he just stuck his long old neck INSIDE our car to try to get the bag sitting on the center console.  And he would not stop staring us down.  Ogre finally threw some feed away from the car to get it away.  I laughed my ass off at the sight of this!!  Poor Ogre had this ostrich staring him down and kept trying to reach its head in to the car and Ogre is trying to hide the food.  Ahhh, I loved it.  I still laugh.

So once we got away from the sketch ostrich, we drove around and Mina was excited to match up the animals with her little guide about the animals and then Papa would read what it said about the animals.  We founds so many different animals and were very impressed about how sweet and tame many of them were.

THEN, we meet another ostrich, on my side this time and I had Benji up front with me.  Man, those things are crazy.  I don’t why they have this reputation of being scared and sticking their holes in the ground.  These ones had no issues intimidating humans.  I went into mother mode and had to “protect my young.”  I shielded Benji from crazy ostrich while telling Ogre to GO!  But alas, Ogre was in Karma mode and instead, happily snapped away with the camera.  He finally decided to drive off when the thing started pecking at our car.  Save the car, forget about the children.

There were several of these Deer that were very sweet, yet, very pushy.  They would see a car and I guess it’s Pavolovian, they would walk up to get food and it was pretty difficult to get them to go away. 

The neatest part for everyone was getting to see zebras and giraffes up close.  We followed park instructions and did not hand feed the zebras, but through the feed on the ground.

Another good laugh I got was getting a good picture of the giraffe picking his nose with his tongue. 

Ogre and Mina both got to hand feed the giraffes and they really thought that was very cool!

By the time we hit the Outlook area and Gift Shop, it’d been 2 hours.  As we drove up to this area we saw a sign warning us that there was still another HOUR of driving after this point.  WTF??  Another hour??  Ack, we still wanted to go to the Dinosaur Valley State Park.  We decided to forego this part and hightail it (the best we could, obviously) through the rest of the park. 

We did not stop to feed as many animals as we did before and just leisurely drove the rest of the way and stopped here and there to look at the cheetahs and rhinocerous, but it only took us about 20 minutes to finish up, so that was good. 

This was definitely a fun trip and well worth our time and money.  Only Benjamin could have cared less, but we’ll be back when he’s older.

Dinosaur Valley State Park

Next we drove over to Dinosaur Valley State Park.  It’s only about a 5-10 minute drive from Fossil Rim.  We stopped to look at the dinosaur replicas and learned some new things.  For example, what I’ve always called Brontosaurus are called Apatosaurus.  Who knew?  Also, while they have replicas of the Apatosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex, these are not the dinos that left tracks here.  The tracks are from the Cretaceous Period and were left by Acrocanthosaurus (the one they thought was T rex) and Pleurocoelus (the one that they thought was an Apatosaurus, or what I call a Brontosaurus).

Fast Forward, we went to Blue Hole #1 first.  Let me tell you that if you’re goal is to do some fun hiking, this is a cool place to start. When your goal is to see some dinosaur fossil tracks and you’ve got an 18 month old, this part is low yield.  It’s a mildly treacherous (definitely doable, though) steep downward climb to the creek bank where you do get to see a few (we found 2) dinosaur tracks.  But then it’s the same treacherous hike back up.

The best place for seeing tracks is #2.  It’s a nice, easy paved walk to some stairs that lead you to the river, that you have to cross, to get to the tracks.  I don’t know what happens when the river is up, but for us, it was just walking across rocks to get there.  Another good tip: WEAR GOLASHES OR DUCK BOOTS!  We thought ahead and for Mina, she had the best time splashing around in areas where the water was shallow, which was quite a few places!!

There is an impressive area where a chase and kill site is fossilized.  But even better than that, there was just a lot of areas to explore and roam around with.  Ogre and I just kept good sight of the kids, particularly Benji and we had a great time in this area!

We did check out Sites #3 and #4, but unfortunately, #3 has pretty much eroded away and there isn’t anything to see.  And site #4 was screened by Ogre and Mina and they found that it was not feasible with Benji and little more arduous for our day trip.

While they were checking out #4, I was able to get a good look at the campsites, and I think that we’ll definitely be back to camp and hike about this park.  It has a great set up with each campsite having electricity and a picnic table with fire pit and some even have BBQ pits as well.  There is also a central location for bathrooms and showers and some playgrounds.  So you’re roughing it, but not ROUGHING it. 

And to make a great day even better, we stopped to eat dinner in town at a great little BBQ joint that was thouroughly enjoyed by all of us, it’s called The Ranch House and was quite tasty, you can read about that here.

All in all, I would highly recommend this day trip to check out animals and dinosaur tracks, but it would also make for a fun weekend trip, too.

And so you can’t call me unfair or unbalanced, they have one of these on the way to the dinosaur park:

And, just for the record, I believe that both creationism and evolution are theories.  Theories, which I don’t believe can be justly denounced or proven, so I respect both positions. 

Details:

• Fossil Rim Park
• Pricing Calendar
• Dinosaur Valley State Park

I tell Mina that she has to either wear tights or put shorts underneath her dress because the dress is “way too short.” 

Her response as she passes me on the way up the stairs?

With finger in my face and S-eating grin, “NO, Mommy!  You’re  WAY TOO SHORT!!  SHORTY!!” 

Her Papa is just sitting there smiling and nodding.  Obviously proud of his daughter’s smart-assedness.  After all, she gets that from his side of the family.

Can I join another team?  Team Phipps is not being very nice to me…

Team Phipps, Short Mommy

P.S.  I’m 4′11.  I guess that is short.

Well, it was another beautiful weekend in Dallas and we were not going to waste it!

We surprised the kids, well, Mina, with a trip to the zoo.  Benji is always just along for the ride.

I was very excited to use my new Happy Hallow membership card.  I learned about this through DFW Area Moms and procrastinated signing up long enough for them to offer a 2 years for the price of 1 year membership.  I think this is going to be a great deal for the Team Phipps excursions!

Family Picture, Elephants Representing Mommy

We arrived around 1 oclock and headed first toward the African exhibits by the Sting Ray exhibit and penguins as we were looking forward to riding the monorail.  Unfortunately, the entire section distal to the Sting Ray exhibit was closed!! 

Mina checking out the penguinos

Mina...not very tall

The kids also did not get to truly enjoy or experience touching the stingrays (which costs 2.50 per person and I am unsure how much longer they will have this exhibit) because their arms were too short.  Ogre and I were able to feel them and they were slimy.  Mina did get to touch one of the spiny ones that have pinchers because one of the zoo ladies pulled it out for her and taught us how to identify the male ones by their pinchers.  That was pretty cool.

We stopped and perused by a few of the animals before heading back to Zoo North.  Mina started to complain that she was hungry.  We headed up to the Food Court and got some lunch for the kids.  I was a little annoyed because there weren’t very many open tables as they were setting up for some private function.  I don’t think that’s very fair for the daily zoo patrons, but we were able to find a table so I can’t complain too much.

Next, we headed to the “Children’s Zoo.”  I was surprised to see so many kids walking and ROLLING through the “river” that ran through the play area (it’s just water that runs over a designated area about 3 inches deep).  One kids was totally soaked.  Our kids would not be participating in that.  There was a little play area and a place where the kids could ride ponies.  More interesting to our geeky little family was the aviary.  We went in to see the birds and Mina was lucky enough to have one of the birds on her arm courtesy of a kind zookeeper, she thought it was “itchy” and later told me it was her favorite part of the zoo!

We decided that this area was not so exciting and headed off to Zoo North.  Being somewhat strapped for time, we asked Mina what animals she would prefer to see and she decided on the giraffes, tigers, and elephants.  We managed to see all of those animals -the tiger was the hardest to catch a glimpse of.  The giraffes and elephant were in the “cage” part (I don’t know what the real word is for that part of their habitat -they are free to go back and forth, but it’s not the part that looks more natural).

Ogre reminded that THE elephant we saw was Jenny, of the contraversial where should we move Jenny to?  After all that discussion, she’s going to be staying in Dallas.

Another fun area was the reptile and amphibian exhibit.  Benji learned what a snake (sneh) was and the sound it makes “Sssss.”  He (and Mina) loved this.  Ogre loved pointing out to me the Rat Snake, which we’ve found on our back porch before and the one on our porch was probably 5 feet long!  And they emit a skunk like smell!  UGH!!!  There is also a tropical aviary in this exhibit, again, a favorite for our family.

We saw more animals and passed a beautiful bird exhibit with the Harpey Eagle (Mina learned about these on Go Diego Go), a Condor (my favorite animal from the zoo) and the Bald Eagle (I wonder if this was Ogre’s favorite, he’s a patriotic kind of guy).

Mina’s favorite exhibit was the Bug Exhibit because she saw bees making honey.  She and her Papa had a great time talking about all the bugs.  Benji was rather bored and we went outside to walk around.

About this time, we decided it was time to go since we needed to eat dinner and get home with enough time for me to get to work.  It was great and we are excited for the next time that we come, when we will be more prepared so Mina can ride the Carousel (requires cash to buy tokens -you can actually use a credit card in the children’s zoo to buy tokens, but we opted not to), we can see the rhinoceroses and cheetahs that we had to skip this time around, and hopefully ride the monorail!!

Details for the Dallas Zoo:

• $5 for parking
• $8.75 for adults
• $5.75 for aged 3-11
• $5.00 65+
• Open 9-5 daily (til 4 in the winter)

If you have one of the Happy Hallow memberships, admission is free!  So you just have to pay for parking, greasy food, expensive animal shaped bottled sugar drinks, souvenirs they’ll play with only today, extra exhibits that are worthless to your short armed children, and carousel rides!  Woo-hoo!

At least not the one in my family. 

Mina has always been quite the camera ham.  She hardly ever takes a bad picture.

Benji, on the other hand…

He’s a little crazy!

Let’s just say that some of my more blunt friends have remarked on how “crazy” he looks in pictures and his own father has asked me why Benji had such “crazy eyes.”  I’ll admit that I was in denial, but even I realize that he does look a little crazed.  He’s grown out of that look…sort of.

I dunno, maybe his sister overwhelms him?

Recently…

We took the kids to the Arboretum for Fall Blooms and yearly pictures of Mina (and now Benji).  Mina’s pictures…perfect.  Benji’s?  Well, let’s just say that many of them ended up on the cutting room floor.  Since these will never otherwise see the light of day, I present them to you here…

I'm not going to smile or look at the camera.

Get that camera away from me.

IF I HAVE TO TELL YOU ONE MORE TIME...

The pretty girl with the fake smile is going to get it!

Saying Cheese!!

And when Benji actually does manage to say “CHEESE”?  Here’s how that turns out. 

Yes, family members have said that he looks devilish.  That’s my nice way of saying looks like the devil.

Benji cheeses very hard! "YOU WANT A SMILE, I'LL GIVE YOU A SMILE!"

Dude, what is up with him??

CHEEEEESSSSEEEE!

I happen to be a tad bit biased and, no matter what, I think he’s a super-cutie…

Sweet Mina turns it into a cute picture

And Boys Don’t Cry?  Yeah, right….