The Zoo

It is summer time and for me, that means two words: Summer camp. While I look forward to this time every year, I am certainly ready for school to start come August. I love summer camp, everyone knows it, but it is very stressful at times because there is always a risk of not seeing all of the clients for the month which means the possibility of fines for the company, which adds stress. Therefore, one has to be extremely organized and sometimes pushy to get everyone scheduled. Getting ahold of parents can be a pain and I have become very good at calling every day to reach some of them. I have found that becoming a pain in the backside will get phone calls returned. However, there are a lot of ups as well. I only see one kiddo in the morning and one in the afternoon which is much different than seeing six kids (on average) for an hour every day. It is weird sometimes to think that I see my clients the same number of times all summer that I do in one month of school. They just are seen more at one time of course during the summer. Anyways, this setup does make it harder because there is no down time during the summer. I will often crave Fridays because it is the "office day" but usually I don't even get a full 8 hours of alone time because I will have worked a lot more during the week and overtime is not good to turn in too often. However, it sounds like I am complaining, which I am not at all. I really do enjoy the summer. It is a nice change of pace and the kids really like it. Jason has a hard time feeling sorry for me during the summer when I complaining about being tired from the day which will often include things like bowling, going to the park, Mr. Gattis, Fantasy World, Prime Time and going to my boss's ranch, just to name a few. He will ask me why I am tired and I don't get the sympathy I am looking for when I saw, "went bowling and drew pictures all afternoon". I just don't understand it! :-) Anyways, another place I will take the kids is the zoo. I took a little one earlier this week and had a blast! Abilene has a new snake exhibit and since my kiddo was a little boy, I don't know, call me sexist but boy . . . snakes . . . it seemed to be a good idea. Well, I tell you what, I don't know who had more fun, him or me. We went in the morning, which meant that the animals were actually awake and looking alive instead of laying there wishing that death would come instead of having to lay in the heat. I have been to the zoo, I don't know how many times, and I have never seen the bears actually awake and the peacock was amazing. The best part for me (who knows what the child liked, I was too busy looking at the animals to ask) was in the snake exhibit. No, it was not the 120 pound python named Alice that was my favorite. It was the cobra, who is new to the zoo and was not a happy camper that day. He was in his snake trance/fighting snake position, looking at all of the visitors, ready to strike. It was very neat to watch. I could not help but sing the song one thinks of when cartoons show cobras. You know what I am talking about: Da da daa da da da da da daa da da daa. The snake even swayed a little back and forth. Well, I overheard the zoo keeper tell someone that if he did not settle down soon they would have to close his exhibit for the snake to calm down because they were afraid he would hurt himself trying to strike the people (but really striking the glass and either killing himself or getting one major headache). When we checked back later (okay really when I made my kid follow me back to the snakes), they had paper over the glass. I guess the snake did not calm down. Anyways, I had a lot of fun. I attached some pictures of the animals. On a side note, this is obviously the first time I have added pictures so please forgive the format as I am trying to figure this all out! Oh, and you know I could not add pictures of animals without adding my little lioness. She was playing at Granna and Pappy's house in the picture. Too funny, that Fluffie of mine!