An Elephant Lover Gets Her Wish

We finished Halloween night with Katie tears, although the event we went to was really fun, it wasn't real trick or treating with full candy bars handed out like in our days on Stark Ave.  The girls missed tearing around the neighborhood with the Learys and our tradition was to always stop at Dave & Jeanie's house last where they always had an individual bag full of treats for each of the kids.  They did do the traditional candy sort/trading exercise on the dining room table, but complained about any South African candy which really is not as good as American candy!  Charlie was in full bargaining mode!

Katie's birthday was the next morning, we had made arrangements to go to this place called Adventures with Elephants that had come highly recommended.  I made some signs to reveal the plan, complete with elephants from her vast collection.

Greg got inspired and decided she needed a real elephant wake up instead...

At the place Greg and the girls did an elephant interaction first, then eventually and elephant back safari. They said the best part of the interaction was playing soccer with the elephant.  Greg's least favorite part was the safari, he said his legs were not meant to bend that way to ride on an elephant...he looked MISERABLE when he got off!

Kelly on the elephant.

 What they also had there were two tame baby meerkats, Charlie was delighted!  He loved petting them and one even rolled over and let him scratch his belly like a dog. 

After the safari there was a couple there that waited for the elephants to bring a picnic basket down to them at the water.  The picnic basket had a ring in it as the guy asked the girl to marry him.  Greg cracked me up his joke about how the guy could always say, "When I see you I think of elephants". 

Katie told us on the way home about in first grade her teacher gave a writing assignment and you had to write about a good day, she wrote about seeing elephants in Africa, but she said she never dreamed it would be real!