Trips to the Fire Station and 4H Petting Zoo

Last week was Fire Prevention Week here in Mountain Home. The Fire Station had an open house with rides on the fire truck, hats, stickers, cookies and milk, Sparky the fire dog and McGruff too. Fireman Brian had been out to Andrew's school to talk about Fire Prevention and also told them about the open house. So, Andrew was pretty excited about it. It was unfortunately on a Thursday (school night) night between 6-8 (dinner/bed time) but I went ahead and tried it anyways. Rob was taking his on-line class that night, so it was just me and boy were those boys excited to see all the fire trucks! Another unfortunate, was that the line was down the block to get a ride on the fire truck! Can you believe it? But as many people pointed out, there's not much to do in Mountain Home, so ... everyone went to the Fire Station that night. The big thing was to get the ride on the fire truck, otherwise I might have tried to distract them with something else, so we got in line. We waited for about 1/2 an hour and were about 1/2 way through the line when they yelled out to the group that there was no line to get in the cab. Well, I had already asked Andrew if he wanted to ride on top or in the cab, and he said in the cab, so I was in luck! We climbed in the back, each boy had their own seat and LOVED it! They were both just so excited. After the trip, we had to get in another line for hats, stickers, coloring books and cookies with milk. By the time we sat down and had eaten our cookies and milk, the boys and Aunty Kendall were pretty pooped. It'd already been a long day, so we headed home and the boys slept well! Unfortunately, I only got pictures on my cell phone and I'm not sure how to get those onto this blog, so you'll just have to picture their excited little faces.

Andrew had Friday off from school for a teacher in-service day and the local 4H club had advertised a petting zoo at one of the feed stores in town. It was supposed to be from 11-4 and we got there about 12. Luckily, most of the animals were there, but none of the other stuff they had advertised were set up yet, which was a bummer. They did have cows, goats, sheep, chickens, kittens and a dog. Both boys seemed to really like the animals, although Andrew was a little scared and wouldn't pet them. James was just running around like he owned the place, patting most of the animals and playing with the other kids. Picture this: I tried to hold James for a little bit because the animals were actually in pens in a parking lot so there were still cars coming and going to the store; Andrew was a little scared of the cows and he wanted me to pick him up (he's like 50 lbs. but whatever, no problem); so I put James down and pick up Andrew, James gets into the pen with the cows! No fear, that kid. :) He probably would've been fine, but he was a little too hard to reach for my liking. I didn't get too many pictures due to the excited state of the boys, but here you go.

Andrew loved the little kittens when they were in their cage, but someone brought them out and he still didn't want to pet them. Apparently it doesn't really have anything to do with the size of the animal.

James trying to figure out how to get in.

James and the chickens.