Brooke was off to girl's camp (she will have to tell of her adventures as things began as early as the car ride up!). As always, something conflicted with her birthday; it happens every year. This year, she was at camp on her birthday. Her leader let her call home! Don and Tyler are up at Scout Camp (Geronimo). So....just Brandon and I are at home and we are having a blast (although we are really missing everyone else about now). Brandon planned a fantastic week thus far so that there could be some real mommy/son time.
Monday, we went to Arizona Mills mall for hours. We walked and walked and then played games at Gameworks....Brandon beat the reigning family champion at basketball. I guess, uh, I was off my game that day, or maybe....Brandon is emerging as quite a little shooter! Instead of turning in countless tickets and waiting for some bored high school kid to count how much he was spending in the prize room, now they have a ticket counter that puts your prize money on the game card! After all that, Brandon decided just to save up his ticket count for another day. (Usually he and Tyler split the tickets so I think this was the first sign that Brandon missed his brother).
Here is Brandon driving at Gameworks:
Tuesday was especially busy. We went to the World Wildlife Zoo in the morning (of a 112 degree day no less) and had a blast.
There were so many amazing animals that we endured the 112 degree heat for five hours (drinking lots of water) because we didn't want to miss the next cool thing around the corner.
Brandon would run up and down the fence near the baby lion, Delilah as she chased him back and forth. So cute!
Long-neck momma giraffe came over to eat from Brandon's hand, but he couldn't quite lean far enough to reach the baby. I found out this zoo is a breeding zoo so there were many baby animals to see.
Check out the baby tigers.
The Scarlet Ibis
The white tigers
The poison dart frogs! They have enough toxin secreted to kill an adult man!
The monkeys (related to Brandon, I'm sure)
The leopard inches above us in an overhead cage!
We fed Koi, ducks, and black swans in the pond as well while meerkats and spider monkeys looked on. Brandon even played tag and chicken with some aggressive ostriches, rheas, and a toucan. It's amazing how close you can get to the birds and animals. These animals seemed to enjoy interacting with my son that has endless energy!
We did save the aquarium (best part) for last so we could be in air conditioning the last hour. Our fearless youngest enjoyed feeding the stingrays in the new aquarium.
We saw pirahnas, pacu, and many different fresh and saltwater fish. The aquarium was amazing.
Then, we went to ice cream with Sven Kestila (our Finnish exchange student from two years ago who was here visiting) and Mike G.
After that, we had sushi at Kabuki with Sidney and Shelbie. Shelbie returned from orientation at USU bearing gifts of USU scrapbook supplies! How sweet.
You'd think we'd had enough, but no, my little trooper waited in line with me to see Eclipse with fourteen other current and former student council members. Although the movie was disappointing, we had a great time. We fell into bed exhausted....
Needless to say, Wednesday was a day to relax.
We'll see how the rest of the week turns out!
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