The Living Desert

I went on Ali's field trip to the Living Desert with her last week. We were told we could not bring any siblings. I felt that this was very annoying but Ali really wanted me to come and so I found separate people to watch both of my children and made arrangements to carpool the two hours to the Living Desert. (We are not allowed to ride the bus with our children.) We had to drop off Annika, get gas, and get some subway for lunch before we headed out there. We met the bus getting there at the same time as us even though we left at the same time and I had to make so many stops.

This is the picture of my group of girls.
The girls ran from one exhibit to the next one. I could hardly keep up. I have never gone to the zoo with 8 and 9 year olds and I learned that they have a lot of energy. I was a little worried about not getting my daily workout but after the day I was exhausted and felt like I had run the 3 miles I try to do regularly.

It was very hot out there. We are used to it being in the 40's and 50's with occasional 30's mixed in there. It was 94 degrees. That caused the kids to need lots of water and to complain about sweating. You would think they had never felt such temperatures. (Wait in our mountains it hardly ever gets above 90 degrees so many they haven't.)


We found the butterfly exhibit and the girls were fascinated with the butterflies. It was by far the hit of the day.
Ali loved the butterflies the most and tried to see how many she could get on her fingers much to the dismay of the zoo people. I loved to watch all the butterflies flying around and smell the beautiful flowers.
After the butterflies we found the coolest park. It was perfect for a zoo.
The cactus slide was fun.
Ali got ate by a snake.
Ali fell down and had to find a bandaid to put on her skinned knee. (This was the third time the same knee got hurt. We ended up at the merry go round. At first the kids were saying that this was a childish thing to do and that they didn't want to go on the merry go round. I could tell they really wanted to go though and were just trying to sound cool.

I advised that perhaps acting childish was a good idea since they were only 8 and would probably have to adults for a very long time. They might as well enjoy being kids. It was funny how they all pulled 2 dollars out of their wallets and and paid for a ride on the merry go round. I am glad they were not too old to do it!
The last thing we did was watch a show. It was the best animal show I have seen in a really long time. (I have been to the zoo and wild animal park and their shows were not nearly as well organized or interesting.)
I took Ali and my friend took her son home with us. They were a little disappointed because we didn't give them 15 dollars to spend on silly zoo stuff like a lot of parents had done. My friend's son looked so sad and I have never seen him that way. I still didn't want to spend the money at the zoo but I offered icy drinks as consolation if he promised to smile the rest of the way home. It worked and he was happy until we got home.