Saturday's Adventure

Today we helped Madelyn celebrate her 2nd birthday. I really think it's a bigger celebration for the parents and boy was it a nice afternoon. Madelyn enjoyed her celebration and my girls had fun with Madelyn, her cousins, and especially Chloe the dog. Wow - remember when you brought her home two years ago today?! I believe we took dinner up to Madelyn's mom and dad about that time and we got to hold that teeny tiny little girl and even then I couldn't remember my own babies being that little - and I know they were! Really, I'm feeling very reflective lately - wondering what else I've forgotten about my kids when they were so little. I remember enjoying them so much at those ages - 2, 3, 4,5 .....don't get me wrong, I still enjoy them very much. It was that marveling at so many new things they were doing...cute things they'd say...funny ways they would say every day words (fridgereator... skabetti....)...their ease of dancing and running, playing, singing (we got Madelyn a Raffi CD and were remembering how many times we would sing Baby Baluga on our way to the sitter: I think we could sing it 7 times between our house and the sitter's!). We had to dig out our Raffi CDs so we can listen to him some more. Nice to know they haven't outgrown Raffi. Maybe I just miss the ease of entertaining them in the car...I could sing for them and they'd like it instead of telling me to stop! I think I also miss the part when they were both strapped down in their car seats and couldn't touch each other. Oh the little things I miss about younger kids!

So anyway, I was supposed to be talking about our adventure of today. As we were driving up to Madelyn's party, we passed a home and I said, "Hey! Camels!" The camels have been there for a long time, but we realized we never drive to Madelyn's house in daylight! SO, on the way home we pulled over to get a closer look at the camels. As we were watching them, the camel peed on the ground, then seemed to suck it up out of the dirt....looked like he was swishing it around in his mouth and we were backing way - sure he was going to spit it at us! As we were saying amongst ourselves, "He's going to spit!" the owner came out and said, "No, he won't spit. Come over here and get a closer look at them." The owner spent a good amount of time with us and the two camels...let us pet them, told us their names (Elvis and Lina - I kept singing "Alice the Camel", therefore, I thought Lina was named Alice...) and told us how they came to get the two animals (they got one from a camel farmer?! in Yuma). She also invited us to stop by any time we are in the area. She was so nice. It was all very interesting and I think the camels were just as gentle as horses we've gotten to pet before. Carolyn was a little leery of them and so was Elyse; Scott made fast friends with "Alice" and I just took the pictures. Carolyn already posted pictures, so I'll try not to post the same ones.