A day at the Zoo with Jake

Today Jake and I went to the Hogle Zoo.  Just the two of us.  It was really fun to see how they changed the area they call Rocky Shores.

 

We hurried and got to the zoo just in time to see their Elephant encounter show.  It was fun.  They were spraying the elephants with a hose.  The baby elephant loved the water.

Mama Elephant

 

kind of weird to see birds wondering around.

guess he feels safe since Thanksgiving is a few months away.

 

Gorilla is eating an empty toilet paper roll.  The area was full of empty cardboard rolls.  They seemed to enjoy eating them and tearing them apart

Jake having fun in the playground

 

Taking a ride on the train

Waiting for the show to start at discovery theater

 

feeding the swans (or was it attacking the swans with food pellets?)

cute!

one of my favorite animals of the day

I don't think he could look any more bored

 

I love watching the otters -We caught them during feeding time

one of the best attractions at the zoo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Property Update - the swing

Today we spent the day working at the property.  The goal for today was to get the poles set up for the new swingset we want to build.  We actually got it done even with dad's arm in a cast.

 

dried up riverbed 

a few of the surviving daffodils

Even a broken arm can't keep him from using the skidster

cutting the grass

 

digging the holes for the swing poles

 

setting the first pole

pole #2

annoying neighbor had friends up for target practice.

It was loud and extremely annoying

 

 

Event #2 Arm

If they claim things happen in 3's I'm not looking forward to Event #3.

Looks like this is event #2 -Once again it looks like my dad has a broken bone. 

He was up working at his property and had a little accident. 

They were pulling down some fallen trees using the wench.  My dad was up hooking the cable around a tree and lost his balance.  He ended up bracing his fall with his left hand and caught a rock.  Basically it snapped the bone at his wrist again.

 

 

This is the split they came up with to brace his arm until he could get to the hospital.

They really braced his arm up good.  This is just his temporary cast until the swelling goes down.

 

 

Update- He does have his cast off now and is slowly getting his wrist back to normal.

 

Sprinkler Fun #1

Event #1

I came home from work to find this mess in my yard.

Evidently there was a leak in one of my sprinkler pipes.

My neighbors came over and helped my dad dig the hole to find the leak on Friday

and then Bryan can and helped repair the leak on Saturday.

These pictures or of the repair on Saturday - Before the broken wrist incident.

 

 

POW Recognition Luncheon

Every year they have a POW Recognition Luncheon.

It's kind of interesting to see what they will come up with each year.  They usually have a speaker, some sort of musical number and a presentation of the former POW's.

 

 

 

 

 

It's sad to see the number of formwer POW's decrease each year.

 

 

 

One thing I found interesting this year was their ceremony for the missing men

They had a table set up with a place setting for each of the different services. (USAF, Army, etc)

They had a little ceremony and left the table there as a symbol for those that did not return.



It was a pretty powerful thing to see.

 

This year they gave out offical name tags.