Animal Safari Birthday Party!

This weekend we were able to celebrate my niece Autumn's 3rd birthday. She had an Animal Safari birthday party at Lake Tobias, a local North American Animal Zoo/Park. It was so much fun, and Collette's first experience at a zoo! All the family met at a pavilion at Lake Tobias for lunch.

Collette was dressed for the occasion in her animal safari shirt and matching elephant barrettes:

We ordered a 6 foot sub and ate almost the whole thing!

We also had a fabulous princess cake, made my Nick and Niki.

Did I mention that Autumn cut her own hair recently? My SIL Gwen is a hairdresser and I guess Autumn decided she was going to give the family business a try. And she wasn't half-hearted in her attempt!! She cut it ALL off! Anyway, here is the birthday girl with her crown:

All of the cousins were excited about the cake! I'm pretty sure Collette looks like she wants to eat some! Hard to believe that soon she'll be enjoying her own birthday cake!!


Autumn opened presents:

And then we went on an open-air bus for the animal safari! Here we are waiting at the station, ready for our adventure!


The safari was a lot of fun. We drove around and saw lots of different animals, and got to feed them crackers. Unfortunately my camera batteries were dying, and we ended up using my phone for some pictures, so we didn't get a lot of great pictures, but we did get some.

Ready for the ride to start!

Doesn't this face just crack you up? LOL!

We saw Rheas, which Collette loved:

Elk:

Buffalo and yaks (the little spotted baby that looks like a holstein cow is actually a baby yak):

Lots of types of deer, including this white buck:

These guys (not entirely sure what they are):

And our personal favorite, the LLAMAS! We tried and tried to get a llama to come close so we could get a picture with it, but most of the llamas were too busy sunning themselves, and the one that did come for a snack got so many treats at the back of the bus that he never made his way to us! So sad. But here were are looking at the llamas (and P.S. check out how long Collette's hair is in the back! Craziness!!)


After the safari ride we went to the petting zoo! The crazy goats tried to eat Collette's stroller:

But Isaac and Tabby thought they were great:

We all loved this tiny pony:

And Isaac had an in-depth conversation with this Alpaca:

When we were about ready to leave, I couldn't resist getting Collette a souvenir from her first trip to the zoo:

Yes, that is a stuffed llama! And she loves it!

All of the kids were entirely worn out by the time we left, but we had such a fun day!