Not all of our recent fun has been Christmas has related!

Family Marksmanship
I mentioned in the previous post that Daddy and Papa Bear went hunting the first morning of our visit. Daddy actually shot two deer within 20 minutes of arriving at the deer stand! (We have a lot of venison in our future! Yum.) The girls were pretty excited about his success and wanted to go see. They helped a little with the gutting process, but they probably would have been even more interested if it hadn't been so cold outside.

Little Cap couldn't quite
stomach the action. She
bundled up in one of Papa
Bear's coats and kept
her distance.

Later that afternoon, we got out the girls' BB guns and targets. Bug, Daddy, and I were the only ones interested, but Bug proved to be a really good shot!

Art Museum
One morning the girls and I headed to the local art museum to see some of the exhibits we missed on our last visit. The temporary exhibit turned out to be the work of a French glass maker who produced during the early 1900s. He created some impressively beautiful jewelry and other more practical objects--perfume bottles, cigar boxes, dinner and glassware, etc. Part of the exhibit was also a "please touch" section about the glass making process.

We spent the rest of our time in the ancient art exhibits--mostly in the South America room and the Egyptian room. They have mummies! The girls were fascinated by a video about the mummification process and then getting to examine the sarcophagi and other tomb treasures themselves.

Zoo Day

Happy train riders! (Bug brought a camera and got some really
good animal shots this visit.)

We found a perfect day to visit the local zoo! The zoo was practically empty, and in this nice cool weather (sunny and 60 degrees) all the animals were active! We decided to ride the train first, and Lion was thrilled to spot the peacock along the track (her goal for the day had been to find him--mission accomplished). We also discovered it was story time day at the zoo. We went to listen to an animal tale and got to pet a tenrec. When we left story time, we could actually hear the lion roaring! We've never even seen him awake before! He was hanging out in a perfect viewing location, and the rest of the Africa exhibit animals were out and busy too--giraffes, zebras, meerkats, etc. We even spotted the rock hyrax for the first time.

Bug took this picture of the zookeeper holding the tenrec--
basically, a hedgehog from Madagascar. So cute!

Here's a video of the lion roaring. (I haven't had much luck
posting videos lately, so I hope it works!)