Cars and Skinks and Parties...Oh My! (but no giraffes)

If there's one thing I take with a grain of salt, it's "green" products. Frankly, I'm just not convinced that hydrogen fuel really will power the cars of the future, it took me years to conclude that solar panels might possibly be an economically sound investment, and I've yet to switch over to florescent light bulbs (although that one might be because I'm just cheap;)...just don't tell the people at the health food store that I buy some of the kids' allergy foods at. Having said all that, taking advantage of our new Netflix account, Spencer and I watched a documentary last night that has me all up in arms: Who Killed The Electric Car?. I couldn't believe the way the electric car was completely crushed by it's opposition. It didn't just die out as so many overly-optimistic environmentally-friendly alternatives do, it was literally hunted down and annihilated. Even watching this documentary with a heavy dose of scientific and political skepticism, as my moderately conservative, engineer husband did, still leaves the viewer shocked and appalled at the way the whole mess was handled. In my opinion, it's definitely Must See TV.

On a lighter note, Spencer and I took Ezra and Georgia to the Tulsa Zoo & Living Museum last Saturday. Ever since, on a whim, we mentioned going to the zoo and seeing some animals to Ezra, he'd been begging to go. So, when Spencer had to make a trip to Tulsa to pick up something for work, it was the perfect chance to go. Despite a heat index of 105, it turned out to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately our camera was doing funny things (turns out the batteries were low) and only actually took about half the pictures we attempted. Luckily, we attempted to take a lot of pictures. Here's the best of those we actually managed to get:

Ezra all reared up and ready to go at the start of our adventure

They had a petting zoo that turned out to be a lot of fun. There was mostly goats when we went since a lot of the animals were inside because of the heat, but the kids didn't mind any. Georgia liked the idea of the animals, but was too scared to actually pet any. Ezra, on the other hand, thought it was the greatest!

Spencer showing the kids how to softly pet the animals

Ezra petting a goat

Georgia and Daddy looking at the animals

Ezra petting...yet another goat

The rainforest room was, by far, one of our favorite exhibits. They gave you the feel of really being in the Amazon. You were able to get right up close to a lot of the animals and were surrounded by greenery on all sides. They wouldn't even let you have any open containers of food or drink in there for fear the animals would try to steal some. Ezra loved the monkeys, Georgia loved the birds, and they both adored the hunter orange and lime green tree frogs.

Daddy and Ezra in the Rainforest room

Georgia looking for tree frogs

Ezra watching the frogs (which we somehow never managed to actually get in any of these shots :P)

Near the end of our zoo visit, we decided to take a break and go on the train. Ezra adores trains, so he was especially excited to go. While Spencer and I weren't super-impressed with the train trip (it was on the shorter side and didn't really take us through any animals), the kids both thought it was the coolest.

Georgia all excited to go on our train ride (sorry about the color, the shade did something funny to this picture)

A few other zoo trip highlights...

When we were in the Discovery Center, they gave the kids a chance to pet a blue-tongued skink. Ezra, predictably, thought it was loads of fun, but, surprisingly, so did Georgia. Georgia usually is too nervous to pet animals, probably beause they're so much bigger than she is, but apparently the skink was just the right size. We couldn't pull her off of it! We were in a hurry at the time to make it to the train before it quit for the day, so we didn't get any pictures, but it was the funniest thing to watch. In a matter of minutes, Georgia made a new friend with a very large lizard.

Both Ezra and Georgia love looking at fish (it's my regular bribe to go see the fish whenever we go to Wal-Mart), and luckily the Tulsa Zoo had LOADS of them. Nearly every exhibit had some kind of fish. Despite the fact that fish are normally considered a little...um...boring, my kids thought they were the best. It was so fun to see Ezra get so excited whenever we saw some and Georgia would do her little fishy mouth whenever she spotted them.

As Ezra's gotten older and has become more familiar with animals, he's gained certain expectations of what we would see in the zoo. He was fully expecting to see a lion, bears, giraffe, monkeys, and turtles, specifically. We were able to fulfill most of those requests...although we just saw the lion's butt as it hid out in it's den away from heat, but Ezra didn't seem to mind, it still counted in his book. We however, did not see any giraffes. It was just too hot for them and they had all went back into their "house." Ezra was very disappointed. The entire way home and all the next day, whenever we talked about the zoo, he would mention that we saw a lot of animals, "but there was no giraffe."

So, I'm planning on going to the release party for Breaking Dawn tonight and I'm uber-excited. I've never gone to a release party before, or even pre-ordered a book, but leave it to Stephenie Meyer to get me out of my shell. My little brother, Jesse, wanted to go, so he invited me and my best friend, Aubrey to tag along with his oh-so-cool college-age self (inviting two moms to hang out...in public...that really was self-sacrificing;). I'll have to let you know what I think of the book after I finish it. Heaven knows, I plan on being holed up for the rest of the weekend soaking it in like a sponge.