The Carnes Crew: Zootastic

We are so pumped that the Kelley's have moved to Cornelius! We love having Adam and Amanda as neighbors and could not be more excited about getting to see those precious boys more often! And, Ella is super pumped her ~~partners-in-crime~~ cousins are more readily available :) We decided to start off the fun and games by spending last Saturday at Zootastic in Troutman (about 30 min away). It's a decent enough place - a little dirty and smelly for my taste :) - but it was pretty inexpensive and the kiddos really enjoyed petting and feeding the animals so all in all a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, the Hen was still a little under the weather from an illness the previous week so he pretty much chilled in the stroller so most of these pics are of ~~the troublemakers~~ Ella and John Dickson.

Me and the munchkins off to see the animals! (PS - That's Henry in the lower left hand corner but he's facing backwards.)

Holding hands in the parking lot - safety first!

Ella insisted on pushing Henry (or "baby Henny") in the stroller.

Listening to the tour guide. (Who, incidentally, was very very strange. And, appeared to not like children very much. Odd.)

Attempt at mother-daughter picture - FAIL. Ella was too busy trying to pet the cat/monkey/lemur-ish things. These had a name I'm sure. Obviously, I did not pay close enough attention on the tour.

Then we moved on to the barn and petting/feeding portion of the tour. This was probably Ella and John Dickson's favorite.

JD feeding the kangaroo.

Ella and Daddy feeding the baby pigs.

Ella had zero fear of the animals. She was practically trying to climb in with them.

Here's the Hen - maxing and relaxing... Just because your a little under the weather doesn't mean you should miss out on all the photo ops :)

Ella feeding the camel.

Feeding the birds.

Stopping for a refill.

While I was taking this shot the wierdo tour guide informed me that these llama characters will spit vomit at you if they feel like it. I then decided for a more wide angle pic from slightly farther back. The rest of the crew was not so intimidated.

Ella and the slightly over-aggressive goat.

JD and the extremely over aggressive emu.

Feeding the ram.

Ella was petting this saying "nice" over and over. We've been trying to encourage "soft petting" as opposed to the grabbing of hair and slapping that Ella usually puts animals through. Maybe it's working??

Cute little baby something. (By this time I had pretty much abandoned the tour.)

And the big finale - the "bebra." Here are Jason, Ella and John Dickson petting the zebra. What you can't see is there a sign just out of range of the camera that says "please do not feed or pet the zebras." Trouble makers, I tell ya.

I was a big fan of this yak thing. Except that he was super smelly.

And Ella's most favoritist (yep, favoritist) of all - the "tuttle." (Which another super wierd zoo tour guide informed all of us was not, in fact, a turtle but a tortoise. I used all of my restraint not to then inform her that Ella was, in fact, 21 months old."

I think this poor tortoise was just trying to make his big break but instead was mauled by two over zealous toddlers :)

And to cap off the trip check this out...Wait - is that three kiddos looking in the same direction - and smiling?!? If I hadn't caught that on film I would have never believed it. Never mind the 75 other shots of the shananigans that went on while trying to obtain said miracle shot.