What a start to our first July 4th Independence Day weekend. A glorious sunny morning without a cloud in the sky and Toby wetting the bed! There’s never a dull moment round here.
After throwing Toby’s bedding in the washing machine and having some breakfast we headed off down the road to Cougar Mountain Zoo. We’ve talked a lot about cougars since we’ve been here so we were all excited about seeing our first one. We should have known better!
The zoo was only small with a range of cougars, tigers, parrots and alpacas (plus a few other bits and bobs) but it has a nice quiet, relaxed feel about it. First stop was the cougar cage but there were no cougars. We knew they’d be there later though so we went to see the tigers. There were three tigers, one of which sprayed to mark its territory. Harry and Toby enjoyed this and spent the rest of the time round the tiger cage talking about how you needed to run if a tiger turns its bottom towards you. Toby is convinced he can out run tiger wee!
We then went up to see the reindeer who had lovely furry antlers. They have lots of special reindeer events all across December so we may have to go back to see them and Santa Claus.
As we spent some time looking at “the most beautiful cranes in the world” Harry and Toby were more interested in a ladybird. When told to leave the poor ladybird alone Toby wasn’t very happy but Harry informed Toby that they should leave it because it is an endangered species.
We then saw some of Harry’s favourite animals – parrots. Tracy asked the first parrot if he could say hello. And he could. He said hello! We asked him to say it again but he wouldn’t! The parrots were very lovely and very colorful – hence why there are lots of pictures:
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Toby and Tracy fed the alpacas some chopped apples which they liked very much. Toby took a bit of encouraging to feed them but he did it in the end. Harry was not having any of it though. Just to be clear, he wasn’t scared of them, he just thought the alpaca would probably tickle his hand and he doesn’t like being tickled. I repeat – he was not scared!
After a few more parrots, no cougars and munching their way through an ice-cream we went back home.
I decided to get the new lawnmower out (which didn’t come with a power cable – how stupid is that!?) and give the lawn a cut. It was starting to get quite long and the home owners committee wouldn’t be happy with us if we let it get much longer.
It was a heavy old mower but the lawn looked much better once it was cut. I think I need a strimmer though just to tidy up the edges.
With the garden tidied, Harry and Toby emerged from playing on the Wii to spend the afternoon in the garden. The main highlight from the afternoon was their version of Total Wipeout. It took a lot of discussion to get the rules of the game sorted but as I’m sure you’ll agree it was well worth the effort. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the very first edition of Total Wipeout – Harry and Toby style (you may need to increase the volume on the video settings below rather than your PC):
httpv://youtu.be/1astp9xu3lo
After they had finished this game they moved on to a variety of other games including throw the ball in the pool:
httpv://youtu.be/bl6p0arcs1Y
That game lasted most of the afternoon. And what a lovely hot afternoon it was. So hot that most of it had to be spent lying on the loungers taking it easy until it was time for a BBQ.
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It’s a tough life but someone has to do it!
