Happy Birthday Alex!

Our new addition, Woody!

The Mamas who adopted from Alex's baby house got together and collected joy boxes for the children. There are 115 children left behind there and the group collected around 200. At least one other orphanage and possibly two will benefit from this effort. I am so proud of this wonderful group of ladies. Our entire church only collected 183 boxes and this group of 18 Mamas rocked it! Thank you Baby House Mamas!

Alex's first jack-o-lantern. Notice Alex's Hawaiian Punch mustache!

Father and son

Beautiful boy and beautiful tree

So excited to see the gorillas this time. We missed them last time. Of course, Alex had to comment on their big behinds.

I loved watching the bears. They seemed to pose for us.

This is at the entrance of the zoo and all the kids get their photo made on either this or the mama & baby lions.

I got to check off an item on my bucket list! Finally got to feed and pet a giraffe. Two, actually - there was a baby as well.

The baby was not tall enough to reach over the railing, so we had to feed him through the rails. When I bent down to do so, the adult was a little pushy and bonked me in the head! We had a good laugh.

Baby

Meerkat. Granma loves these and watches them on the Animal Planet show, Meerkat Manor. This one was so cute, but chubby compared to the ones on the show.

Alex wanted a picture of himself climbing on the turtle.

Don't have a clue what he was trying to do here.

Lion by the tail

Riding the dino

My little monkey

Riding the pony

One of this three train rides.

Yesterday was Alex's 5th birthday. We celebrated by going to Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. We had a great time and enjoyed seeing how much Alex has grown since our birthday trip last year - not only in size, but emotionally as well. We didn't do a big party this year because there were so many others in his class who did parties and because he wanted to go to the zoo. He will have a small family party at Granny & Grandpa's on Saturday.

I will update again next week with Halloween photos. Halloween is not a favorite holiday of ours, but we do allow Alex to participate as long as he only wears a "nice" costume, avoiding things that are against our beliefs - witches, werewolfs, vampires, etc. We strive to teach him that it is for fun and not a ritual.

Love to all,

R & T & A