by laura beth

We had a couple of great days with Caleb (7), Emma(5), and Sarah(2)-Kenny's cousin Chase and his wife Carrie's kids. They spent the night with Gigi (Grandma Ratface) and Grandma Laurie while Chase and Carrie had a yard sale, and we had a great time playing outside. Kenny and Caleb were playing catch with a tennis ball. Caleb threw it hard, and it bounced off the brick wall and disappeared. We spent several minutes looking for it, before I found it under the branches of a short palm, with the sharp needles of the palm embedded into the ball! Amazing! I guess Caleb has a pretty strong arm...

Another day we met up with the whole family and headed to Irvine Regional Park in Orange. There is so much to do there! Aside from the usual parky suspects, they have a petting zoo with tiny goats and such; a regular zoo that's filled with seemingly old or injured animals (cougars, coyotes, black bear, beaver, coati, Bald and Golden eagles, Great Horned owls (my favorite!), a Chinese pheasant (my other favorite!), and more; there are pony rides, train rides, water bikes, 2 person trikes to ride through-out the park, and tons more. Once again, I left the camera in the car for half of our time there, so I only got limited photos. Maybe if Carrie puts them on her blog I can snag some of hers...The kids had a lot of fun on the pony rides (Caleb and Emma went on horses and got trot rather than walk) and we had a nice picnic. It was a really fun day at a beautiful park. To top it off, there were peacocks meandering through-out the park grounds (really my favorite!)