Back At The Trek

Last Friday we had a play date lined up with a little girl that Zion loves to play with. Wouldn't you know, the night before said girl comes down with a fever and spots. So not OK to have her come around Elias. Zion took it in stride. She was sad at first but then reported back to me that it wouldn't be good to have her little friend come over when she was sick because then she (Zion) could get sick too. Yep. Darn tootin'. So at the last moment we took off to one of our favorite animal viewing venues, NW Trek.

I counted on having a bit of fun. I didn't count on it being so dang hot. Blech! Too hot for my pale self and my pale kids. We are so totally English and Swedish and Irish and whatnot. Way too many -ishes to be at all made for the sun. So we slathered with sun screen. A little too much apparently because at only our third stop to see our furred and feathered friends Zion started screaming. Turns out she had some sunscreen left on her face and she accidentally rubbed it into her eye. Oh my goodness, I know how much that burns. Poor thing. I tried to wipe it out with water on Elias' burp cloth. No good. Especially since she continued to rub which only got more in her eye. I had to wrestle her arms down and rub what was left on her face into her skin but she just kept crying and rubbing and and I only have two hands - ahhh! Then I poured some of our water into her eye to flush it and I thought we were ready to continue but a minute or so later she's still rubbing and started crying again and saying she couldn't see. Talk about a heart stopper for a moment while I tried to clarify what she meant by that. Regardless it was clear that we needed a bit of help so we sought out the first aid station.

We were lucky that they had a handy bottle of eye wash and between Rob and I we were able to flush out her eye enough to make her feel better. Her eye and face remained red the rest of the trip but at least she wasn't crying anymore and we could continue. To make the most of our short time left we hopped on the tram. Spring and summer is the time for babies dontcha know.

A little mountain goat baby.

And a little bison baby (not a buffalo - a bison mind you).

And all of my own babies including little Elias who got to ride in the Moby Wrap for the first time. Unfortunately, he didn't get to stay long as we both got WAY too hot. But he was happy while he was in there.

As it happens we were sitting across from another family who had a 5-year old boy and a 3-year old girl. She became fast friends with Zion and they chatted the entire time as little ladies will tend to do and hardly noticed the animals as we drove by.

There was also this gorgeous elk and his ginormous rack. Holy cow, look at the size of those things. I'm always amazed how they don't just tip forward under the weight.

Gideon got a little giddy at the end. He will do that when he feels like he's gotten away with something naughty like not getting put down for a nap. It can only last so long though. Shortly after I snapped this he snapped himself and became obsessed with wanting to walk around the tram and a fit ensued. I prefer to think about this cheeky grin though.

After getting off the tram we were all hot and tired and needed to get home so we skipped the rest of the park and headed out. A fun, oddly adventurous kind of day. Especially when on the way home Rob thought he'd find a backroad to get us home "faster". I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. :)