The Living Desert

Devin's friend Joe was in town last weekend with his girls Mackenzie (6) and Lexi (2) so we all went to the Living Desert Saturday morning. Luckily the weather was nice. We had 5 days of heavy rain last week so it was great to get outdoors again.
We went inside the petting kraal and Kayla wasn't scared at all. In fact, she walked right up to this brown goat and starting stroking his back. I wonder if she thought it was a big funny-looking doggie.

Kayla and her new BFF. There were plenty of other goats and sheep walking around, but she didn't have any interest in them. She just wanted to sit next to this one and pet him the whole time.

Then the other girls came over to pet him too.

Of course we went for a ride on the merry-go-round. It's actually pretty fast so Devin had a hard time getting any good pictures of us going by.

Holidays in the Desert

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We enjoyed ours at home. We don't like traveling during the winter because our weather here is so perfect this time of year (70's and sunny)! Although, we do miss spending the holidays with our families so we'll probably go somewhere next year.

Saturday morning at the park with Connor:

Wildlights! at the Living Desert: Every December the Living Desert (our local zoo and botanical garden) does a Christmas lights display throughout the park. They also have an animal show, arts and crafts table, and firepits where you can roast marshmallows and make smores.

The park intoduced a new attraction this Christmas, an endangered species carousel. Kayla loved it!

They also have a really cool model train display. It's huge and has at least a dozen trains running at once.

Christmas Eve: We took a morning drive up to Idyllwild and had breakfast at our favorite restaurant the Gastrognome. Unfortunately, there wasn't much snow for Kayla to play in.

Christmas Day: I struggled for weeks to keep Kayla from touching the ornaments and presents under the tree. Finally, it's Christmas morning and she doesn't want anything to do with the presents! Then she saw Devin and me opening our stockings and decided to join us.

Playing with her new toy from Santa:

Kayla LOVES to pet and play with the doggie!

She also LOVES to be outdoors!

Stomping on leaves is fun!

So is chewing on sticks!


Watching Daddy play with his remote control car:

Wow! It sure goes fast!

New Years Day: Kayla eats yogurt with a spoon all by herself!