April 13th

Some family friends of ours bought Emma a pinata, which my dad informed Emma of when we arrived on Wednesday. We wanted to wait until my sister arrived to give it to her and hang it up, so she kept asking over and over again when she was going to get her pinata. On Friday morning he hung it up in the tree and she began taking swings at it. I had to help her a bit, as otherwise, we'd still be hitting it tonight...however when it became apparent that it was starting to break open, she got very upset. Apparently, she didn't want to break the bunny. So her grandpa did a great job taping it up for her and she played with it for the rest of the weekend. The bunny even rode with us to the Wild Animal Park, though it didn't get to see any of the animals because it was lying down in the back of the car...

Later that morning we drove down to New Braunfels, to the Wildlife Ranch, which is part of Natural Bridge Caverns. It's one of those parks where you drive through and the animals come up to the car. We got bags of special food to feed them. Among the animals that we saw and got to feed from the car were sprinbok, gemsbok, aoudad and waterbuck (both types of goats), zebra, ostrich, emu and donkey. We also saw other animals, including giraffe, wild turkey, llama, various types of deer, camel, longhorn and bison.

Emma actually let a couple of the more docile animals eat out of her hand. A few of the animals were a bit more aggressive in their attempts to get food. The ostrich and emu actually stuck their heads inside of the car and went straight for the food bag in my dad's hands. The zebras would stick their heads in the car and open their lips, exposing their obvious lack of dental hygiene...

There was a petting zoo at the end where Emma got to pet some goats and alpacas. She had a great time and enjoyed getting to be up close and personal with all types of new animals.