A swimming apple, and life's a zoo.

Friday afternoon Xander was pleasantly surprised when we picked him up early from school. We were going to drive up to Salt Lake to run a few errands and needed to leave before school got out to get everything done…and sometimes it’s good for your sanity to skip out on school. We went to Thia’s bellydance boutique to look for a coin hip scarf for Laurelin. She loved all the sparkles and glitter in the store. After she picked a light purple coin scarf we found two pinkish violet beaded armbands to go with it. She was so excited! I love watching them get excited about stuff, it’s so fun! Laurelin is also enjoying more sign language. We’ve been checking out the Signing Time DVDs from the library, and she does quite well at remembering them.


On the way home we went by Tropical Fish Wholesalers. Aunt Holly had sent Gwen money for her birthday to pick out her first very own fish. Gwen picked out a nice red oranda. She was so excited she refused to let go of the bag the whole way home. She deliberated for a while on a name. At first she said his name was simply “Fish” (she signed it). Then a bit later she decided his name would be “Apple” (one of the words she actually says out loud). Apple seemed to stick.




Saturday morning Xander was explaining to me how he didn’t really like that on Friday he had spent most of the day away from home. (He’d been at school until about 3, and then we hadn’t arrived back from Salt Lake until around 6ish.) I told him I sympathized with him, that can be difficult. Then he declared, “Mamma, where ever you go, I go.” Sweet boy.



Yesterday we worked on filming some more of our Snow White movie that we’re making with the kids. Isaac got very into making costumes out of construction paper. He cut out various monster shapes (horns, claws etc) and taped them to himself, Xander and Ammon. They wanted to be dragons in the movie, but when I told them there weren’t any dragons in Snow White, they decided that instead of being dwarves, they’d be various monsters, but still play the part that the dwarves had, but Gwen, Rus and Antonio the puppet are going to be dwarves…so it’s going to be the Wilson production of Snow White and Assorted Dwarves and Monsters.



I had my first session of training at the zoo this week. Much of the time was predictably occupied with policies and procedures, but we did get a tour of a couple of buildings that are not accessible by the public. These areas contain the animals that I will be trained on handling in my presentations to the zoo guests. There was quite an assortment! I can’t wait to being training with them next week. I can’t list them all here, but I can give a sampling. There was a tiny 3-banded armadillo with an expression on its face that can only be described as endearing. Other mammals housed there were ferrets, chinchillas, rabbits, and a couple of tenrecs (hedgehog-like creatues from Madagascar) Providing ambiental “music” were a couple of kookaburras and a pair of sulfur-crested cockatoos. Among the reptiles were various tortoises, and a number of snakes, among which was a stunning, glossy, indigo snake about six feet long. The amphibians were represented by a bullfrog and some large tiger salamanders. Invertebrates included a vinegaroon, (imagine a somewhat scorpionlike creature, but instead of a stinger, it sports a whiplike tail from which it can eject a vinegar-smelling liquid when threatened; a Chilean Rose-hair tarantula, and a giant millipede. I couldn't imagine a job more fun than this one will be!