I’ve mentioned before how we decided for Christmas this past year to give the kids an experience rather than a bunch of gifts…because ya’ll, our house is covered in stuff.
Well, the experience included a trip to a home school convention in Cincinnati to hear and hopefully meet our favorite author and singer, Andrew Peterson, a trip to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. We made our trek in April.
About a month before the trip, we had a family movie night and stumbled upon a cute little movie on Pureflix called Little Ponderosa Zoo. We soon learned that the Little Ponderosa Zoo wasn’t just a movie but an actual place and it happened to be “pretty close” to our route to Cincinnati. Since I needed to get out every two hours, we decided to include this little zoo in our trip.
Ya’ll, it was the best decision. A perfect break during a long road trip and an opportunity to see some pretty neat animals up close and personal…and feed them! It’s a wildlife sanctuary and most of the exotic animals were “pets” before the owners realized they were actually real wild animals.
If you are ever in the middle of Nowhere Tennessee and want to get out of the car and rest for a couple of hours. Little Ponderoas Zoo is THE place to go!
Rabbits! Ready and willing to be loved on.
We walked out of the barn and Emmie saw all the goats. She ran up to them and began proclaiming, “I wuv you! And I wuv you! And I wuv you!” She was in heaven.
Liam and Silas were super excited to feed the ponies.
We fed kangaroos too!
My super excited treat was seeing a little rescued monkey as everyone was leaving. He was very curious about all of us and played peek-a-boo with me, running away from me and then eventually getting a little closer as I continued to talk to him. And then, oh my, then he looked at me and gave the biggest grin. I flipped out. And no one was there to witness it or get it on camera! Most of the monkeys are generally from abusive or neglected situations. This one, was just absolutely adorable!
This girl! 
And this young lady!
A very happy Chi!
Super Ems and her brace with her baby and baby’s new brace.
Emmie loved sliding with Ace.
And playing squeeze in the cubbies!
I missed PJ day at Bruster’s but the kids and Mark carried on the tradition.
Zoe was accepted into the Foreign Language Honor Society for excellent work in Spanish 1 and 2 (I did not include all of her other languages on duolingo, mango and memrise).
I managed to eek out two pies for pie day….first trimester struck but I pushed through.
Someone became toofless in March.
Emmie learned that silly faces are fun to make in windows.
When Malachi got his birthday gift from us, Ceili Rain found one and asked if she could do that for her birthday.
On her actual birthday, she got one something from us and a little something from her cousins.
Papa and Grandmere got to celebrate the day before her birthday.
They got a great tour of the Kennedy Space Center.
They also got to tour the Wycliffe Bible Translators campus. The boys were quite impressed and Zoe was very jealous.
One of their last stops was to visit cousins. These are special cousins to us as they have been praying for us and Emmie and our adoption for so long. So grateful for Facebook to get to know them and then for an opportunity for Liam to visit them and see all of their amazing plane memorabilia!
Plant Therapy is our go-to essential oil company. I don’t use oils religiously but I love to have them on hand and when I remember, I don’t mind looking up mixtures for things here and there. I love Plant Therapy’s honesty and transparency and purity of their oils. Aside from that, I have struggled with where and how to organize them. Plant Therapy ran a sale on their boxes and I jumped on them. They are awesome ya’ll! I had plenty of oil for all of my oils including my synergies
Emmie’s first Chuck E. Cheese trip.
Zoe got her braces off in January! This is her before…
…and this is the after.
Donuts…a 2 year old’s best friend.
Malachi made it all the way to the top of the cube rope climb at the park. Super proud of our spider man!
Winter the Cat, thinks the kids school box (my check box for them to put their work in) is her personal nap area on my desk.
If you look closely, you can see the actual flakes.
Some actually stuck (for a few seconds) on the car.
