Saturday, April 16, 2011

Wet Smelly Good Times

Baby animal days at the American West Heritage Center was cold (no surprise), wet (no surprise), and smelly (no surprise). We had a great time. Basically baby animals are born in large quantities and kids of all ages get to hold them and pet them. Its a huge event where they have booths, activities, and wild baby animals, this year they had bear cubs there. We didn't go to the official Baby Animal Days since it was snowing and cold. We did go a week later to the Baby Farm Animals. Check out the AWHC website if you want to know more of what they offer rather than just what we did.

Okay so we got there and it was raining. We paid for our tickets (regardless of what the website said if your kid is 3 you pay for them) then we went to the chicks and ducklings. My kids aren't all that happy to touch live animals and usually like to look at animals when there is a definite fence between them. I had to grip Spay's hand to get him to "hold" a duck. Math would only touch them with his finger then pull it back very quickly. Because of the weather these two animals were in the main building. Then we headed outside and it wasn't raining.
We took hoods off and uncovered the stroller and headed to the farm house with the calves, piglets, lambs, and ponies. Yeah my kids were having none of that, no touchy. I think they were very happy just to see the animals and climb on fences that I just stopped trying to get them to touch anything. Besides that meant that they were less likely to get any sort of sickness from these animals. If you haven't noticed animals are not very hygienic. Thank goodness for hand sanitizer. Oh then it started raining.

But the kids really wanted to go on train. A train in a farm, really? Yep its true, the train was really cute. It had actual tracks and a train whistle. It goes around a pond thing twice, then your done. It was fun the first round then it started really raining. Math wanted off.
So for our final act, we stood in line for pony rides. The rain had let up a bit so we thought, 'hey lets go on the pony rides and then go home.' Dumb dumb dumb. It was raining so hard by the time we were to the front of the line that I was ready to bag it and come home right then, but we all make sacrifices for our kids (sure) and we stuck it out. Spay loved it! He loved the horses and had no problem riding them, but he won't pet them. So weird.
We had our cousins with us and it was raining off and on the whole time. By the time we left it felt like we had been there over three hours. No, we were there for just over one hour. I was totally exhausted because staying warm and keeping your kids warm, dry, safe, and clean is a huge job on a farm.

This is a big event for the Logan area. We just HAD to go so that we could say we went. I really like holding duckling and chicks but the rest of the animals are just not so cute and furry even when they are babies.  I have gone in the past to the official Baby Animal Days and both of them are comparable in stress levels. However one great thing, if you want to hold and pet animals everyone gets a turn, and if you like to just look at animals its great too. For the majority of us working with animals is a spectator sport at zoos and the AWHC.  If its not raining or snowing next year I will go. I guess they can't do anything about the smell.

1 comment:

John and Jenny said...

I love it! Wish we lived there to go with you. (not really, but it would have been nice to visit and go with you) My kids would teach your kids how to touch animals!