On Sunday we headed up to Camp Verde, Arizona.  There, they have a park called Out of Africa so we decided to check it out, thinking it would be a great time for the kids!  Minus it being hot and Maddie throwing up all we had a great time...and so did the kids!  The first show we saw was of Tigers and their trainers swimming and running around in a cage.  They had two beautiful tigers that played and “attacked” balloons and jumped into the water.  The tigers have built a relationship with the trainers, but obviously they are still very wild and unpredictable.  I’m not sure I would be so willing to be inside a cage with these giant cats.  But, no one was hurt this show and it was quite fun to watch these big cats attack this stuff and then get thrown big chunks of raw meat as rewards. 

After the cats we headed over to see the giant snakes.  The keepers brought out two giant pythons (about 16 feet) and the kiddos were able to get up close and personal.  Nathan was quite distraught at first since they were asking for volunteers and he wasn’t picked, but after he was allowed in to go and pet the snake he forgot all about it.  I was extremely surprised to see that Allisyn was even willing to touch it.  Unfortunately due to the amount of kiddos inside the area where the snakes were they didn’t get to be up by the snakes face...but they didn’t seem to care.

Then we walked past many of the animals habitats and were able to see brown and black bears, more tigers, lions, giraffes, zebras and many other things.  Bryan and the kids were able to watch the big animals be fed their hunks of raw meat.  Bryan said it was pretty entertaining to watch one lioness grab her meat and jump up on top of her shaded house to devour it in front of everyone. 

The highlight for the kids was the safari ride at the end of the day.  They loaded up on a bus so and took at tour around the park.  The huge hit was feeding the giraffes...which is wear Nathan was kissed!  (we have a video of it that we’ll have to put up at some point)  Allisyn was too scared to be kissed by the giraffe.  The kids also thought the camel and zebras were pretty cool as well. 

Maddie unfortunately has been a bit under the weather.  She has finally cut her first tooth which we have been waiting for months for her to do.  The other two kids got their first teeth around 7 1/2 months and Maddie is now almost 10 months.  She also might be fighting a bit of a cold...although it is so hard to figure out if her symptoms are from teeth or she truly does have a cold.  All that coupled with a hot day she lost it (thankfully her daddy was holding her in the bjorn) so we headed to the air conditioned car for about an hour and a half while Bryan, Allisyn and Nathan finished the park.  She was quite tired, but wouldn’t sleep.  So I finally just held her in the front seat with me and she was quite content and happy driving the car...Bryan and the kids all came back to witness her having fun...we got a cute video of her.

Labor day weekend was a great weekend of relaxing and spending time with just our family.  We are excited for the upcoming long weekends as we hope to discover more of Arizona before we leave here in a little more than a year.