Out of Africa

For a family Christmas present, Justin's parents gave all their kids and grand kids tickets to Out of Africa.

This is a great place with animals you can see, touch & even feed! We all had a blast being together. It was our last "trip" before Bode was born so we lived it up. :-) I took tons of pictures so sit back and enjoy!

Our first stop was inside a caged area with lots of friendly reptiles. The boys loved this.

Caleb brought his own dinosaur and I think was trying to introduce him to this big guy.

Some of the family. ;-)

My sweet in-laws. They are so fun!

Next we boarded the bus to see & feed the animals like the giraffe and camel. They gave us all carrots to feed the giraffe. I sat next to this cute guy. 

Breezy and Daddy had a good time being together.

Our first stop was the giraffe. I forget his name but I remember there were 2 of them and they had to be kept in different spaces because they fought over an imaginary girl giraffe. That's a man for ya! 

What happened next was funny. As we pull up, all of the kids on the bus start waving their carrots around excitedly thinking this giraffe would come right over. 

Little did we know that the giraffe was sleeping with his eyes open. So our tour guide got out of the bus and tried to wake him him by throwing carrots at him! It was great entertainment!

Finally when Mr. Giraffe woke up he realized we were all yelling at him to come and eat the carrots so he came right over. The cool thing to do was feed the giraffe by putting your carrot in your mouth then he would give you a big wet slobbery kiss. 

Gunner was pretty brave and got his ready. 

I didn't have my shutter speed set fast enough so I missed the tongue-to-the-face shot but this was taken just after Gunner got a big fat kiss! He loved it!

Krista (or Aunt Kissa as Bree calls her) definitely got a good kiss. My bro in law, Ryan is a goof. He kept teasing the giraffe with the carrot and putting it over his wife's face so she would get licked over and over. It was so funny. 

 Me & my boy!

One of the next feeding spots was the camel. It wasn't quite as cool as the giraffe, but fun nonetheless. Caleb loved him!

Awww, how sweet. I love her chunky little face.

Gunner definitely had a great time. 

After our bus tour ended we headed over to the white tiger show. They do lots of tricks with the tigers. It's crazy that they really are just very large cats that like to play the same as house cats...only they could take your head off with one swipe of their claws!

Action shot!

After the white tigers, we walked around and looked at some of the wildlife just hanging out. I made sure that fence was sturdy before letting my children wander so close to these animals!

The next stop we made was at the reptile show. They brought out lots of reptiles including this very large, very scary looking python. They invited groups of people in to come hold it and touch it. The guide told everyone they could touch anywhere on the python except for his head. 

What happened next was classic Caleb. He sits right down to touch it and I guess Mr. Python's head was getting too close or Caleb thought he might want to eat his play dinosaur so he decided to give him a good bop on the head!

As soon as he did that everyone around him gasped and some kids started to back up. You can see the scared look on everyone's faces.... Mr. Python, however, just raised his head up tall wondering what just happened. He was very gracious not to strike back at my child for smacking him in the face :-)

We decided it'd be best if Caleb stayed closer to his mid-section instead of his head. 

The last show of the day for us was the hyenas. It was neat to learn about them and hear their "laugh."

I love this last picture. Bree had enough and crashed on Grandma. So sweet.

All in all, it was a fun trip as an entire family. Thanks Mom & Dad for a great time and great memories!!