The Journey of Parenthood…

Yellow River Game Ranch

Quite awhile ago a friend of mine gave me Lightroom. I have been WAY too busy to even try to figure it out. I’ve only used photoshop during a course I took in college and have very little memory of what to do with any of it. I know I’m VERY behind on the blogging and sometimes when I get behind I also get sick of blogging (I know that kinda doesn’t make sense but writing about stuff that happened awhile go isn’t as much fun as writing about stuff that just happened ya know?). To liven things up a bit I edited several of the next blog entries using Lightroom. No harsh judgements on how cruddy I may have done…I didn’t watch a tutorial or anything, I just played with it! Let me know what you think, ALL of my posts up until now have been edited with Picasa (and yes, I edit each and EVERY picture that I post!) so I’d love to know if you like these better, or if I should stick with Picasa 🙂

Anyways…May was the month of weddings. We had Taylor’s on April 30th, Claire’s on May 21st and Chelsi’s on May 26th. All three were, obviously, out of town for us and I simply couldn’t even consider picking one or two to attend! Poor Zach…he’s praying that we’re DONE with weddings for awhile 😉 Claire’s fell on the weekend after we got home from Bermuda and I couldn’t think of leaving Kye again after we’d just been gone for 5 days. We finally came up with the great idea to bring Mom with us! We stayed in Norcross and got the chance to visit a place that she took us to many times growing up, The Yellow River Game Ranch.

We drove up Friday afternoon (after Kye’s nap) and got up that next morning and headed to the ranch! I woke up with a KILLER migraine but tried to push through the best I could because I wanted it to be a fun time together, it didn’t disappoint 🙂

I hunted for a great hotel with free breakfast and wifi 🙂

It’s been SO long since I’d been that I appreciated all the tips people gave me on Facebook. I wore tennis shoes (which I’m even surprised that I own..I bought them to wear in Paris for all the walking!) and brought along plenty of crackers and carrots for the animals. RIGHT when we walked in the deer came up to us, ready to eat!

He was hardcore about my crackers

So cute 🙂 I was cautious though b/c when we were kids one attacked my mom there and had to be sedated!

Now that Kye is older it’s fun to pump him up for stuff (we aren’t going to Disney until Sept but every time he sees the castle on a movie we talk about how we’re going there and who he wants to meet!). Prior to this trip we talked ALL about meeting the animals and what kind he’d meet and what kind he wanted to meet. The one he really wanted to see was cows…I wasn’t sure there would be cows there but once he saw the deer he was good to go!

In the beginning, he loved watching ALL the animals

To me, it was SO awesome to see squirrels come right up to us and eat from our hands! We LOVE watching the squirrels at home in our backyard (we even just bought a squirrel feeder for them)


goats

such cute little baby ones

I was VERY surprised that they had a bear area there. I mean, you couldn’t pet them (duh) but you could still feed them! Kye LOVED watching the bear and several other kids kept throwing apples at him (so mean) and the bear wouldn’t eat them. After we left I’d ask him about his day and what he liked and his answer was always “bears eat apples.”

A guy who worked there walked right in the area to pick up all the apples and the bear didn’t even care that he was there!

Is it just me or do donkeys always seem to have funny personalities?

Kye LOVED the sheep!

By FAR the ugliest animal there…grosssssssss

Big Daddy has a farm. Well he has a lot of land, tractors, some crops, a horse and now chickens. Every time Kye visits G-Mama’s house she rides him on the golf cart to see the chickens and Big Daddy has even let him feed them before. It’s always cute to hear him talk about the chickens when we go to pick him up, these little baby chicks were precious!

We bi-passed a LOT of the animals because, like your typical 2 year old, Kye was over it after about 20 min. We did stop to see the bunnies and it was great because you could touch them without having to reach through a fence. I LOVE touching stuff (random Emily fact) so this and the deer were my favorites.

Mom was hardcore about picking up the bunnies!

This old one was REALLY sweet and hungry

(I LOVE wearing my la coco turquoise bead necklace with my sunset bangle!)

We completed the whole thing in an HOUR. We had stopped on our way and gotten lunch to eat a picnic there but we were done so early we ended up heading back to the hotel to eat it. I had envisioned us taking all morning and having to rush back for nap haha It’s easy to forget that a toddler doesn’t have a long attention span! We did spend a little extra time playing on all the horse rides, many of which were there when I was a kid!

It was a short, but wonderful visit! I love DOING things. It’s so important for a child to learn by experiences and not just from books, tv, and such. He got to touch and feed many animals and interact with many that he wouldn’t usually get to do. I’m very excited to take him to visit Zoo Atlanta and the Aquarium soon – I think he’s at a GREAT age for it!

So glad Gramma got to come with us!

Another great reason to bring Gramma along on trip…great family photos!

Emily Parker
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