Life in a whirlwind

1 + 1 = ?

2009-12-14T10:09:00.002-07:00

Morgan had a math assignment where she had to take the numbers 1-9, draw pictures representing each one (one cat, two clouds), add one more to the picture and then write out the math sentence. For some reason, she just wasn't getting that the answer is always going to be the next numerical number. For example, to figure out 7+1 she would start counting from one. I kept explaining that it would be 8 because 8 comes next. Then she got to 9. While drawing 9 figures she lost count of how many she had already drawn. I told her to count what she had. She counted four. I asked her how many she still had to draw and without skipping a beat she replied five.

So... was she just bored with the simplier equation and therefore not concentrating or what?

A New Artistic Medium

2009-12-10T14:44:00.003-07:00

While at a restaurant, Morgan entertained herself in the following way. She took out her gum and stretched it across her napkin. Then she took the pepper and shook it all over her gum. Then she took the salt and shook it all over her gum. When asked what she was doing, she replied: making an art project.

Now that's using an unusual medium!

Denver Art Museum Rocks!

2009-11-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

While my parents were in town for Thanksgiving we went to the Denver Art Museum. Being an art minor and seeing the artist emerge from Morgan, I've been wanting to take her here for a while, but I also didn't want her to get too turned off by "a boring art museum". I had no worries. This museum is beyond kid friendly.

First of all, you can pick up a free backpack or art tube that contains different activities for the kids to do through out the museum. Morgan was overwhelmed by the choices (design an African mask, make special googles to help you hunt for foxes in an exhibit, make a cowgirl) so we passed on the backpack this time.

Even without the backpack there is plenty to do, just look for plaques with Seymour the mascot and you will find a kid friendly activity such as combining different African musical instrument to make a song, playing cowboy bingo, playing an Eye Spy Memory Game, creating your own postcard or scrap art, and building a sculpture as seen below.

Currently, there is a temporary exhibit called Embrass that has some really neat modern displays. My favorite was Chamber. It's a big room with projectors all around. At first, they project moving pixels but then the pixels turn into different words. These projections move through out the room. Some seem to flow out air vents and back in through a door. It's really neat to see. Morgan liked being in front of the projector and covering herself in pixels.

Hands down, Morgan's favorite thing was Tobias Rehberger's bungee room. It's an area filled with bungee cords where you try to push and pull your way through, finding little clearings along the way. You can't fall down if you try! We visited this spot three times between other exhibits. Morgan was having way too much to stop and take a picture so Gigi posed for me.

There are also spots to stop and rest and listen to music related to the exhibits.

We were there for three hours and only saw the first building. We did go to the second building to find the Kid's Corner but we were disappointed. There isn't much to do here: a matching shell game, a few costumes to put on, some blocks to build and a coloring sheet. We didn't stay in this room long. Next time we will just stick to all the activities in the main museum.

And Morgan's already asking when the next time is. It will definitely be sooner rather then later.

Tactile Play Gone Bad

2009-11-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Part of Morgan's therapy is to have lots of tactile play with things such as shaving cream, paints, and beans. Instead of just using her hands, she is supposed to use her feet since those seem to be most affected by her hyper-sensitivity. The thought is that the more exposure she gets, the more she will be desensitized. Here is what happens when you leave her unsupervised.

You have to give her huge props for being so thorough. She's managed to cover ever inch of the floor.

Panda-moni-No

2009-11-24T08:39:00.002-07:00

She said no to the speaking part. She was really torn between doing it and her fear of the unknown. She was worried about: where the musical was going to be performed, what the stage was going to be like, who were the other kids that had speaking parts, would they be on the stage the same time as her, would she still be able to sing with the rest of the class. It was too overwhelming for her and she told the music teacher she would like to pass this time. The teacher told her that I needed to send her an e-mail letting her know I agreed with Morgan's decision. Morgan and I discussed things and came to the conclusion that she would decline the part this, but would like to be offered a speaking part at the next play, once she had an idea of what this part would entail. The teacher was very understanding and said that she would keep Morgan in mind for next time. I'm sure she would rather have her back out now then have a crying, panicked kid clinging to the curtains on performance night.

Panda-monium!

2009-11-20T08:04:00.004-07:00

The kindergarteners are putting on a school muscial in December called A Bear-Y Merry Holiday. Morgan's class will be the Panda bears, so she's supposed to wear black and white. Luckily, Gymboree is carrying a Panda Holiday line. I got her this shirt with a black velvet and tulle skirt. Doesn't that work out perfectly?!

While practicing Morgan's song, she was singing Pandamonio. I spent way too long aruging with a 5 year old on whether the word was pandamonio or pandamonium. Nothing like a five year old telling me pandamonium didn't even make any sense. I finally had to tell her to ask her music teacher what she was supposed to be singing.

We also found out that Morgan was picked to be one of the four kids with a speaking part. We were thrilled but also surprised. This is the same girl who hides behind my legs, clings like crazy and grunts when a stranger says hi. She does, however, perform in front of all the parents in gymnastics when they have exhibition week so at least she has some experience. She's still not 100% sure she wants to do this. We told her she could think about it for a few days and then decide, but once she makes a choice next week, it will be final. Her lines are:

Quick, open the doors and let them all in! Then, at last, the fun can begin.

She already knows them fairly well so I think she'll do it. Her main concern about doing the lines was 1) being on stage by herself (which she won't) and 2) that she would still get to sing the songs with everyone else (which she still will). Will see next week what she's decided.

Belongs

2009-11-16T15:20:00.004-07:00

We enter the Center where Morgan is starting her therapy. When the therapist comes out, Morgan drops to the floor, rolls up into a ball and hides behind my legs. Any other time I would have felt embarrassed. I would coax her out with words about how inappropriate her behavior is, especially for a five year old. I would cringe that others were looking at my child, rolled up on a dirty floor and judge her, judge me. But not here. Here this is par for the course. They've seen it all before. The therapist gets on the floor and puts her head down too, peaking out once in awhile to grab Morgan's attention. It works and Morgan swings to the other side of the pendulum. She's jumping on the therapist, whom she just met. She's racing down the halls. She's distracted and diorganized. From 0 to 60 in a couple of seconds.

But once again, here it's OK. Here it is expect. Here she belongs.

The Princess and the Pea - Part 2

2009-11-16T08:53:00.004-07:00

Remember the story about the Princess and the Pea? After too many mornings of tears and frustration over getting dressed, the Queen finally called the town doctor for advice on how to deal with this behavior. The Queen and King were at their wits end on stopping this defiant behavior. And that is when the doctor informed them that the Princess had Sensory Processing Disorder or SPD.

What is SPD? It's a neurological issue where the body has difficulty processing information from the five senses, the sense of movement (vestibular system), and/or the positional sense (proprioception). It's like walking outside into the bright sunlight after being indoor and your first response is to squint and block the light with your eyes. After a few seconds, your body adjusts and you are fine. But for people that are over-responsive, their body's don't adjust. A misplaced seam on a sock can cause severe discomforted to the point where they can be writhing on the floor in literal pain. A pencil dropping on the floor can sound like a canon going off. And then there are those who are under-responsive to stimulation. They might not respond to a normal voice command, they might not notice smells that others complain about. Thirdly, SPD can manifest itself in seeking behaviors. A Seeker might intentionally fall on the floor or bump into items. A Seeker might crave "squishy" activities. Usually a person with SPD has a combination of these main elements.

Morgan's main diagnosis is tactial overresponsiveness, auditory underresponsiveness with vestibular and proprioception seeking.

She hates to walk on grass barefooted, claiming it's too itchy.

She never liked playing in sandboxes.
She complains that her seatbelt is too tight - even when it isn't.
Hoodies, jeans, zippers, buttons, tights, socks, shoes and boots bother her.
Her hair, shirt sleeve or shirt collar is always soaking wet from constantly chewing on it.
She is constantly jumping on the furniture, crashing against the floors and walls.
She inappropriately climbs on, clings to and enters other people's personal space - often accidently hurting someone.
Once she gets excited, it appears as if she's lost all control of her body - she doesn't know where her limbs stop. She often trips and flops around.
She spins constantly.
She often sits upside down (hanging from the couch) and likes to be flipped.
She has frequent, intense tantrums that last for an extensive period of time.

The list could go on and on but you get the gist of it.

I was a member of an online parenting community for the first several years. There was a group of us that had what we called "High Needs" children: children that needed more attention, more redirection, had more frequent and more out of control tantrum, and had excessive energy. Children that just didn't seem to be as easy to raise as the majority. I have since found out that two other kids from this group have SPD. I would not be suprised to find out that more of them have this.

I'm learning a lot as we go through this process and I'm excited to learn more. I'm just another mom who's trying to navigate my way through the world of SPD.

Birthday Party Times Two

2009-11-09T20:19:00.005-07:00

This weekend we had two birthday parties to attend. The first one was Saturday night for our neighbor Madison. The kids (and adults) had a blast jumping around.

The second party was on Sunday at the gymnastics school for Morgan's daycare best friend Taralyn. This was the first time the girls got to see each other since they started their new (and different) kindergartens. Despite going to bed late the night before, Morgan awoke two hours earlier then normal on Sunday. To say she was excited to see Taralyn was an understatement. To add to the excitement, Ellie was also at the party. These three girls are exactly alike and despite being apart for so long, they were all three saying the same phrasing and using the same mannerisms.

The three moms agreed that we would have to get the girls together more often.

What I Did On My Fall Break: By Morgan

2009-11-05T09:35:00.002-07:00

Each student got a chance to tell the class what they did over Fall Break. Did Morgan pick swimming in the ocean? Watching the Mayan's dance? Perhaps snorkling? Or feeding the fish off the pier? The winning answer:

"I went to Minnesota and drank Sprite"

Looks like we could have saved ourselves hundreds of dollars and ten hours of flying. Are you kidding me???!!

Mexico Recap

2009-11-04T06:33:00.010-07:00

We had a wonderful time in Mexico staying at the Barcelo along the Mayan Riveria. The Barcelo is made up of five different resorts all in a row. While we were there, only two were open. Between the economy, the flu scare and the drug wars going on at the border, not many people were traveling to Mexico. It was dead. The bad thing about this was that two of the pools were closed as were most of the restuarants and buffets. The good thing was that there was no issue finding an empty chair on the beach, no lines at meal time and you could always find a desserted area to escape to.

We don't have many pictures of the trip since the days consisted of: eating, going to the kid's water park, eating, going to the beach, eating, going to the regular pool.

The kid's water park was great. There was lots for the kids to do, the water was shallow through out and Mark and I could relax along side it while Morgan made friends.

So it would only make sense that Morgan would prefer to the regular pool where she's unable to touch, can swim enough so that she's a danger to herself and needs to hang on one of us at all times. No relaxation here for the adults!

She tried snorkling for the first time and was a natural. The girl who can only swim a few feet and then frails around in a panick when she has to take a breath out of the water could swim the length of the pool with a snorkle in her mouth. It what a length it was! She would just slowly flutter along, as relaxed as could be.

We took a half day trip to Tulum. You can tell that Morgan was extremely excited to be here.

To her credit it was extremely hot and humid but still, she managed to put on the performance of her life time. After we had a Coming to Jesus talk with her and she calmed down, we stopped in the shade for a rest where there was another family having this conversation:

Father: I don't know why we bother trying to give them new experiences. They don't appreciate it and it's just a waste of money.

Mother: We should have just redone our kitchen instead. I mean look at them!

Mark and I exchange knowing glances and we moved on feeling a bit better knowing we weren't alone in our situation.

Morgan perked up a little bit when she got to get up close and personal with the local iguanas.

But it wasn't until we were back at the beach when Morgan really felt happy again.

Despite being pummetted by waves, she enjoyed Boogie boarding while Mark and I played goalie. One of stood between her and the ocean so she didn't get sweeped out and one of us stood between her and the beach so we could pick her up when she flounder around too much.

The grounds were beautiful with lots of lizards and igunana to see.

This is one of the many angels through out the courtyards outside the rooms.

Each afternoon Morgan was excited to discover what kind of towel animal the cleaning crew left behind.

We even got in a few rounds of putt-putt golf.

We made friends with a family from Mexico City who had two daughters 4 and 6 years old. Morgan asked the mom if she was Mexican. The mom said that she was half Mexican and half Chinesse, then asked Morgan what she was. Morgan shrugged her shoulders and stated "Regular". Looks like we'll be having to work on that one!

I think Morgan understood that she was in a different country and it was good for her to experience a different culture. She kept asking how to say different things in Spanish and wanted to know if they were going to celebrate Halloween. We explained to her about the Day of the Dead and was able to show her examples of what they did.

When we got home, we were faced with quite the climate change. Denver had received two feet of snow and was 20 degrees. Too bad Mark only packed flip-flops on the trip! We arrived home safely with our car stuck in snow, half in the driveway half in the street.

Lost in Translation

2009-10-23T08:30:00.004-06:00

This weekend we leave for Mexico. Morgan hasn't been very excited about the whole thing even though we explained we would be at the beach and swimming pools most of the of the time. She loves the beach and she loves to swim so I was a little confused to why she wasn't more enthusiastic.

This morning, as we are on the way to school with snow on the ground, bundled up in winter jackets and hats, she makes a comment. I can't remember the specifics of the comment but it made me realize something. At that moment, I realized that she thought it was going to be snowy and cold in Mexico. And what fun is the beach going to be in the cold?

When I explained to her that it was still summer weather in Mexico, her level of enthusiasm shot straight up. She's now thrilled to be going and can't wait to hang out on the beach.

Parent Teacher Conferences

2009-10-22T09:17:00.003-06:00

We had our first Parent Teacher Conference for Morgan and it went much better then expected. The teacher does notice that she has issues sitting still and she is annoying her classmates during circle time by sitting too close, poking them and hugging them too tightly. But the good news is that, despite these issues, she's learning and thriving. She is proficient or advance in all areas, excelling in the reading and writing department.

Unfortunately, for her report card, she did receive partially proficient in her writing. Nowadays, report cards are based on an assessment (test) given on a specific day, not on their overall ability that the teacher observes through out the weeks. So... if you have a stubborn little girl like we do, who decides on this particular day that she doesn't want to complete the assessment, you wind up with a partially proficient score. When she was writing her story, she drew herself and a lion but didn't not add details to show that she was at the zoo despite her teacher's coaxing. Below the picture she wrote "I WEN TO THE ZOO AD SW A LN" (I went to the zoo and saw a lion). Her writing is considered advanced but because she did not include details of the "where" in her picture (even though it was in her writing), she was marked down. The teacher told us that she usually completes the who/where/what requirement but since this was the assessment, there was nothing else she could do about the the report card score.

Welcome to the Public School System!

Silence - Wordless Wednesday

2009-10-21T08:57:00.003-06:00

Since things have been so chaotic in our household the last few weeks, I thought we could all use a few rare moments of silence.

Blue

2009-10-14T14:06:00.002-06:00

Morgan is always picking out things that are blue because "it's my dad's favorite color". She goes to the doctor and gets to pick out a sticker, she picks the one that is blue. She picks a blue swim noodle at swim class and proudly announces to the teacher her dad's favoritism. Blue M&Ms are put to the side to save for dad.

Some day she's going to be crushed when she finds out his favorite color is really green.

Mills Lake

2009-10-11T10:20:00.003-06:00

Now that's Morgan is in school, I got to do something with my parents that I haven't done in five years - take an adults only outing. We went up to Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked to Mills Lake. I read the trail wrong and thought it was only 2.5 miles long. Turns out it's really 2.5 miles one way, plus they don't start counting the miles until you get to Alberta Falls. The whole trail ended up being 6 miles long. Whoops! But my folks were troopers and attacked the mountain without any problems. The view of Longs Peak at the top was definitely worth it.

Now they are ready to do Longs Peak. Well, maybe not quite.

Houseguests

2009-10-09T12:31:00.002-06:00

I haven't had a chance to post much this week because I've been enjoying my parents visit. Pictures to come soon. Until then, enjoy this picture Mark took on our doorstep.

That's a spider eating a praying mantis. I asked Mark what happened to the spider and he said that it he just let it be. Great. Now there's a killer spider somewhere in our front yard just waiting to attack. And can I just add that's one messed up looking spider!

Shudder!

Spirit Week

2009-10-01T06:45:00.002-06:00

This week has been Spirit Week at Morgan's school. Monday was Sport's Team Day and Morgan was sporting an orange Bronco shirt. Tuesday was PJ Day and Mom and Dad were only too happy to be able to send her off to school in her PJs. No changing involved!

Yesterday was Cowpoke day and Morgan wore a cute plaid dress with her hair in two braids. I wanted to get some pictures of her in her outfit, but she had some demands. First, I had to take a picture of her holding Tonka's paw print looking all pitiful.

And then, she wouldn't stay still, but had to take twirling pictures.

Anyway, you get the gist of how she looked.

After school, they had their first school dance - a country hoedown. All week Morgan was telling us she didn't want to go so we were going to skip it. When I went to pick her up from school, the dance was already in full-force and she didn't want to leave. Morgan hung out mostly with the older girls she knows, but also stayed close to one little girl in her class named Nicole. We stayed all the way until it ended. I was exhausted just watching all the kids "dance" which was more like run around wild. She was all wound up, but I was ready for bed!

It's All in the Details

2009-09-29T08:51:00.002-06:00

When you are searching for the Discover Kids show Peep to watch On Demand, you might want to verify which channel you are accepting or you might get more then you bargained for! I'm just saying...

2009 Version of Cliques

2009-09-24T16:35:00.003-06:00

It used to be East side versus West side, nerds versus jocks but now there's a whole new division of cliques going on. That's right, it's vampires verses wizards at Morgan's school. According to Morgan there are several kids that are vampires. REAL vampires. For real. But I shouldn't worry because she's not a vampire. Nope. She's a wizard. For real. And it's a schoolyard fact that vampires are not allowed to play with wizards and that is precisely why she can not be friends with Ashely. Cause she's a vampire. For real.

Sickness

2009-09-21T13:59:00.004-06:00

On Thursday Morgan and I got our flu shots. By Friday we were both sick. As of Sunday night, she still had a fever of 101 so Mark stayed home with her today.

She is not your typical sick child. She's always hated sleep. She fights it like nothing else. Being sick does not change this. Instead of sleeping the days away, she's moaning and tossing and turning, trying to stay awake with every last ounce of effort. Her eyes have been bloodshot and unfocused and still she doesn't give in. We've tried explaining that sleep will make her feel better, but she refuses to accept this.

She also has a terrible cough. When she does finally fall asleep at night, she is jarred awake by her coughing. Since OTC cough medicine has been banned for kids her age, we have tried giving her honey. While she would gladly slurp down any "real" medicine and goes so far as to request meds even when she is feeling fine, she will not swallow a teaspoon of honey. She is locked jawed, thrashing her head back and forth and crying that honey is too gross.

Oh, the oddities that are Morgan.

Lessons Learned

2009-09-16T09:35:00.001-06:00

Even though we had cut down our dead tree flush to the ground, we still needed to dig up the root ball and remove it before the new tree was delivered and installed. There was an option to pay $65 for the nursery to do this, but we thought we could easily do this on our own. The tree was only four years old, how hard could it be? The answer: pretty dang hard.

Mark thought he could dig up the root ball and remove it with his hands. After digging a hole twice as big as we expected, he still wasn't able to get the ball out. So he hooked up his tow rope and decided to pull it out with the SUV. The tow rope broke. After a trip to Home Depot and dropping $50 on a metal chain, he was able to pull the ball out. There was one little catch. Without thinking, he had driven the SUV into the garage, not across the street. So now, the SUV is stuck in the garage with a giant root ball behind it and no where to go. We couldn't hook the chain up to my car either because part of the metal chain you would use to attach to the hitch also broke in the process. Mark was going to have to work at home the next day and then beg the workers to take away the root ball. Backed by $20 the workers were more then happy to take it away.

So... that's $25 for the old tow rope, $50 for the new chain with will also have to be replace at around $25 plus $20 for the workers. That's a grand total of $120. Plus the hard labor and time lost.

Moral of the story: If you are going to pay almost $500 for a tree and the installation, you might as well throw in the extra $65 to remove the current tree.

On a happier note, we now have a beautiful, more mature tree in front of the street and no homeowners fine.

Random Thoughts

2009-09-14T14:41:00.004-06:00

Week 5 of Kindergarten and Morgan has finally stopped having melt downs after school. Hopefully typing this does not curse me.
Morgan is on a football kick. She LOVES the Broncos (sorry Mom and Dad, I tried) and she's a loud and boisterous fan. A commerical came on about being a fan and she started yelling at the tv "Hey! We are Bronco fans too! You got that?!" During last night's game, she drew a picture of a Bronco cheerleader. Mark is so happy, I think I might have caught him crying tears of joy.
This weekend we dropped almost $500 on a tree. For our street. Most likely because the builder did not plant them correctly since over 30% of the trees in our neighborhood are dead. I am bitter.
While looking at trees, there was one with a bird's nest in it. Morgan wanted that one. Badly. Because it came with a bird. Much to her disappointment, we did not get that one.
On Sunday we had a great time with Joann at our church picnic. Her and Morgan entered the three-legged race. It was the first time Morgan attempted this. She needs practice. But she did have fun.
We were supposed to go on our last camping trip of the season this coming up weekend but cancelled. It has turned way too cold for this to be enjoyable. I'm very sad it's time to winterize the camper already. Boo hoo.

We Are Family

2009-09-08T14:39:00.000-06:00

Before heading to Worthington, we made one last stop at Pipestone National Monument. Pipestone contains quarries that the Native Americans used to carve out their pipes. The area is still considered sacred by many American Indians. It is not a large park, but is very interesting and contains a beautiful trail by a waterfall. Morgan grabbed a Junior Ranger booklet and completed all the activities. Her favorite thing to do was cut the pipestone. I think she could have done that all day. After she completed the booklet, she received her second Junior Ranger badge. She also got her National Park Passport book stamped and now has a grand total of four stamps.

We arrived in Worthington just in time to surprise Mark L for his birthday party. We had a great time catching up with family.

Morgan and Ava. Ava was born one week after Morgan.

Morgan, Amy and Grayson. Grayson was a newborn at our wedding. Now he's getting so grown up.

Ava, Morgan and Alizah were all born within a month of each other. Alizah's first, then Morgan, then Ava.

This was the first time we got to meet Alizah's little sister Hailey.

Morgan had a bit of a crush on Grayson. Morgan announced to Grayson - I love you... and now I'm going to kiss you. And then planted one on his arm. This was followed by Ava screaming Eeewwww! Morgan just kissed Grayson. When she gets older we'll need to explain what cousins means.

The first generation of cousins: Amy (Grayson's mom), Andy and Amy (Alizah, Hailey and Jaxson's parents), Mark and I, Anni and Pete (Ava's parents) and Aaron and Mandy. Missing from the picture: Randy. Not able to make the party: Aaron and Amy K, Alisha and Mitch, and Matt. Yes, it's a very big family.

Omaha's Wild Kingdom

2009-09-04T08:18:00.007-06:00

For Labor Day weekend, we headed up to a family gathering in Minnesota to celebrate Uncle Mark's birthday. We decided to break up the drive on the way there so we left on Thursday after Morgan got out of school and drove to Kearny. Once there, we did the math and figured out we could stop in Omaha and visit the zoo. I know what you are thinking: wow. The Omaha Zoo - that has to be thrilling. Oh! But it is. It's one of my favorite zoos.

We decided to hit the highlights and visit three buildings: The desert dome with the Kingdom of Night below it, the Scott aquarium (which we had never seen before) and the Lied jungle building. One of the best things about this zoo the fact that you are emerged in the environment and that many of the exhibits are cageless. For example these two guys in the dome are roaming around freely. There's no glass, no wires, nothing between you and the wildlife. Or I should say the less dangerous wildlife. Of course the bobcat is safely tucked away from us.

The Kingdoms of the Night shows the nocturnal animals in their natural settings. Highlights include a "bottomless" pit right along side the trail. You can put your hand right into the water. Unfortunately the illusion was broken by some idiot who had thrown a coin in the pit and you could see it "hanging" in mid-air about four inches down where, apparently, the glass floor starts. There is also a bat cave with a 70 foot ceiling. My favorite exhibit is the last one - the swamp with the floating boardwalk. It features a Trapper's Cabin, a beaver lodge, cypress trees and 30 swamp animal species, including opossums, beavers, muskrats (or a river otter or something), in barrier free habitats. This would be Morgan's least favorite due to the alligators that are right under foot. Since all these exhibits are in the dark, it's hard to get any good pictures.

Next, we headed over the Scott's Aquarium. Morgan stopped to show us how excited she was to be at the zoo.

Again, because of the glass, it was hard to get any good pictures at the aquarium. It wasn't a very large aquarium, but we managed to spend quite a bit of time there. We spent a lot of time watching the Antarctic penguin exhibit in the beginning. There were two baby King penguins but boy, they were not little. They were as tall as their parents at about three feet tall. They towered over all the other types of penguins. It was hard to believe they were babies.

We also spent a lot of time sitting in the shark tunnel and watching the sharks and stingrays swim all around us. There was also a blowfish that was checking us out.

New to the zoo this year was the Skyfari - an arial view of the park. The ride takes you in an open air lift over the giraffest, cheetah yard, Garden of the Senses, the lagoon, monkey island, elephants and rhinos. It was really neat to get this different view of the animals. We were so close, we could have jumped on the animals backs.

Our last stop was the Lied Jungle building, the largest indoor rain forest, where one follows a jungle path while observing animals that are free ranging or contained behind water and rock barriers. Below, Mark is thrilled to be demonstrating how to cross one of the rope bridges.

This curious little guy is right on the railing you see above. There is nothing between it and us. If it wanted to, it could jump right on our shoulder. Mark wanted to come back with a banana in his pocket and see what would happen.

Futher down, a sloth was literally hanging directly over our heads.

Lucky for us , it was bat feeding time when we walked through. See those two brown shapes in the top center of the picture? Yep. Bats. About 50 bats swarming back and forth among the food. And no. These are not behind glass either. And yes. They were dive bombing right by our heads. Strangely enough, Morgan, who was freaked out at the bat cave where the bats were safely tucked behind glass, stood here for a long time calming watching the bats fly to and fro. I, on the other hand, wasn't quite as calm. As another panicked visitor pointed out to her boyfriend who was telling her to look at how calm that little girls was: Yes, but she's short so the bats aren't right at her head!

Although we only did three buildings and the Skyfari, we were at the zoo for almost 5 hours. When it was closing time, it was time for us to drive on to Luverne, MN - our stop for the night.

(As a side note, the zoo is opening a new Madagascar exhibit to house rare lemurs and orchids. The zoo has a multiyear wish list that includes an Arctic Center, a new elephant habitat, an Australian exhibit with kangaroos and an Antelope Valley exhibit. All good reasons to keep coming back year after year.)