That's Worth $17 Any Day...

Over the holiday weekend, James and I took the kids to
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose.


James had been thinking for a while that he'd like to take the kids, and over the weekend, they offered a special that allowed us to get into the park at a remarkably reduced rate. Essentially, the deal was one free admission for each five cell phones or hand-held games donated to the park. We dug a couple of outdated cell phones out of the box of dress-up clothes and made the kids purge their extensive collection of Game Boy games. In the end, we had enough stuff for three tickets, meaning our admission was $17 (the price of a child's ticket) versus the $77 it might have been.
We're suckers for a good deal.


Gracie was particularly excited about her newly inherited camera...


... and Brystol was excited to have a new place to nap.


Really excited.


Chubby chipmunk cheeks are perfect for wildlife parks.


While at Fossil Rim, we got stuck in an ostrich-induced traffic jam...


... and James had a stare-down with a zebra.


The zebra won.


We also ran across this blue-necked bird-type creature. It has a name, but I can't remember for the life of me what it is. And since it's the middle of the night and I'm not homeschooling anybody and I have no desire to get off the couch to go look at the pamphlet I brought home from the wildlife park to find out the correct class and/or phylum this particular creature hails from, we're going to leave it at that -- the blue-necked bird-type creature.

So there.

An interesting fact I do remember about this blue-necked bird-type creature is that the blue on its neck changes in relation to the mood it's in. In the pamphlet, there was no clarification as to mood/shade of blue ratio, so Bub decided that the color on this guy meant he was mad...


... but he looks pretty happy to me.


Brystol, on the other hand, does not.


All along, we'd been tossing pellets from the $7 bag-o-feed we purchased at the gift shop. It was good for coaxing the animals to your car so you could capture them and take them home and ride them up and down the street and be the coolest kid in the whole cul-de-sac to learn more about various sorts of animals, getting up close and personal with the science-type stuff.

For example, this brown guy with antlers...


... not to be confused with this brown guy without antlers...


... or this zebra, who was all about the coaxing.


We learned a lot,


we had a good time,


and we could poke a zebra in the eye from the comfort of our car seat
(if we were so inclined),


and that's worth $17 any day.