Lazy 5 Ranch

The Lake Norman Mommies forum has been such a wonderful thing for me and our family! We have met so many friends, learned so much about our community and things going on, and it has helped Huntersville feel like our true home. Because of that, I have taken on a position with the group as the K13 Planner. K13 stands for "kids going into kindergarten in 2013). My job (completely volunteer "job", by the way) is to plan several outings or events for the K13 members of the group each month. What's really awesome, is that a lot of these 3 year olds have 1 year old siblings - so even Emma meets friends! This morning we met at the Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville. People can drive their cars through the ranch to see the animals, or you can take a wagon pulled by horses. We took the wagon, and I think that's got to be the best choice. It was AWESOME to see all these animals so up close and personal! Drew is afraid of most dogs, so I was really proud of how he worked through his fears and was feeding the animals by the end of the ride! Emma just kept barking and meowing the whole ride! haha The animals know that we have tons of food for them on the wagon, so they come right up and beg for it! And if your bucket is too close to the edge, they steal it (we lost one bucket b/c of this!). Emma wasn't too sure about it at first!

Here's all the animals behind us, picking up all the food we'd dropped and chasing us for more!

Drew's looking ahead to see what animals are next.


Feeding the animals. I wish I could remember what everything is. The guide told us about all the animals, and we'd stop and feed them and look at them.

And here's when Drew got more daring and started feeding this scary-looking beast! They told us to be careful not to get it in his nose, b/c he'd spew it back in your face! yuck!

And some of the animals were a little more aggressive - this one has his front hoofs on the wagon and is running on his back legs! They told us not to set the food near the back of the wagon b/c the animals would jump up there with us!

We didn't stop next to these animals!! HUGE horns!

Feeding the giraffe was pretty cool!

We are up in the wagon, standing on the bench to reach him! There was a baby giraffe with them that was born May1st, and it was already huge!

This was totally on their own...I had my camera out taking pictures of animals, and I'm so glad I caught this sweet moment!

Emma got more comfortable with these huge creatures being so close to us. I asked the guy about his fur - and he's shedding! Looks painful!

Here's a zebra walking by our horse-drawn wagon. We weren't allowed to feed them b/c of the angle of their teeth - they'd bite us.

Here's a llama following our wagon!

When our wagon ride was over and we were climbing out, Drew was one of the first ones climbing down with his bucket of feed, and several ostriches came over and started going nuts eating right out of the bucket! He didn't panic or anything, just kinda stood there - but I was thinking, "aren't ostriches MEAN??" I was trying to get to him, and then some of the workers came over and shewed them away real quick! Whew! Scared me to death!! Then we got to walk around another area with some other animals. Here's the kangaroos, who stared at us and then went hopping aound real fast, like they were performing.

Here's most of the crew!

Emma liked the rocks...This was too cute when the kids all grabbed each other's hands as we were leaving! Emma and Betsey (the two one-year-olds) and another 3 year old aren't in the picture. We had a group of 13, so it was a pretty successful trip! Such a unique thing - we'd never done anything like that before!

This is totally random, but Emma has been making bubbles with her slobber! She's been doing it for several weeks. At first, I thought she was just making a weird, annoying sound, but then I looked closer and saw her spit bubbles!! What a crazy little girl!! haha