Happy Mother's Day! :)

Well, I had a GREAT Mother's Day weekend! Saturday morning we got up & Tessa baked some cupcakes for my Mother's Day dessert & decorated them all with flowers. It was all her idea & she did them all on her own. They were SO cute, & delicious too! Then we headed out to an "African Lion Safari," about a half hour from our home. It was a BLAST! We went to the drive-through game reserves first. We saw lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, lots of different birds, llamas, monkeys, antelope, ostrich, zebras, wildebeests, buffalo, elk, reindeer, and much more! There were no fences between our vehicle and the animals, so we were only a few feet from all these animals. Pretty cool. At one point, in the area with the monkeys, they were climbing on people's cars & pulled off the rubber strip around the window of one car & was chewing on it. We decided to not get too close. We didn't want our car destroyed by monkeys! :) It was SO fun!

After that, we went to grab some lunch at the food court, and then headed back out to the "watering hole" to see the elephants go swimming (they do it a couple times a day on a schedule). It was so cute when they were bringing them down the road, toward the lake. They were all walking in line, holding each other's tails with their trunks.

Then we went to 3 different shows. The first one was the "Parrot Paradise" show. They showed a bunch of different birds (and a bat), explaining facts about each, and having them do various tricks. Then they brough out some Macaws, and had them perform. They sang songs, talked, rode a little bike on a tight rope, picked out colored rings & put them on a post, and more. It was great! The next one we went to was the "Birds of Prey" show. They brought out a bald eagle, owls, a condor, hawks, falcons, etc, and showed some flying demonstrations and talked about how they hunt, and other facts. Then the last show we went to was the "Elephant Round Up." That was one of our favorite parts of the day. They had the elephants perform, stand on their hind legs, dance, play soccer & basketball, paint, and other things. It really was amazing!

After the shows, we let the kids play on a climbing gym that they had there, and then we all got some ice cream & walked around to see more of the animals. Then we took a little "African Queen" boat tour, as well as the scenic train ride tour.

By the time we were all done, it was about 5:30 p.m., so we stopped for dinner on the way home. It was a PERFECT Mother's Day celebration with my family---the best gift I could have!

Then on Sunday morning, Neil let me sleep in, which was SO nice. I almost never sleep in, but I had been up late the couple previous nights (Jonah has been waking up lately because of his allergies, and then Friday night I was waiting up for PJ to get home from a big Regional church Dance.) So I finally got up around 8 a.m. (that is VERY late for me). Jonah & Clay were SO excited to give me their presents they had made at school & their church activities. Once everyone was awake, I opened my presents & then we headed to church. Tessa was asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting, so she spoke on "What I've learned from my mom." It was so sweet & she did a GREAT job! It was her first time speaking, and she didn't seem nervous at all.

After church, we enjoyed the yummy cupcakes that Tessa made, a nice dinner that Neil made, and just relaxed, watched some T.V. & hung out together. It was a GREAT Mother's Day weekend! I'm so blessed to be a mom & to have such a great husband & the best kids ever! :)