Me and My Boys: Lazy 5

Noah has been showing more interest in animals lately, so Brad and I decided to take him to one of our favorite places nearby... the Lazy 5 Ranch. I was so SO excited. We realized it's been like 10 years since we've been last... which means my little sister was like five. That's a long time.
Anyway, we ended up taking Brad's car. It's not as new as mine, and the longhorn bulls don't seem to understand their horns get to the car before their mouth does.

Brad's car has its random issues... it's a little red Chevy Cavalier. Not too much of a clunker, but still not super new either.

Anyway, we put Noah in my lap in the front seat so he could help feed the animals as they came to the window. He thought they were hysterical. They'd feed out of the bucket in his lap, and he'd start giggling up a storm.
I was busy filming the whole thing, when Brad says, "Uh-oh..." I asked him what was wrong. "The car is overheating..." I looked at the little gauge, and it was right at 250. We were in trouble.
We couldn't drive through the zoo to the end real quick, because there were pigs and zebra and random other animals hanging out in the middle of the road. We also couldn't get out of the car for Brad to check it, because... well... there were wild animals who would probably think we were getting out to feed them or something. Plus it's against the rules.
Thank God for cell phones, is all I have to say. We called up front and told them what was happening. They held up the cars and told us to turn around.

Once parked, Brad checked everything out, but it was so hot, he needed to wait for it to cool down. So we moseyed on over to the petting zoo area to kill time.

Noah needed to fit his running in. He's good about his workouts like that.

Very committed.

The camels were most definitely entertained.

Oh, and look what Noah found!

More dirt!

And it!was!everywhere!

These may have been my favorite...

Once the engine had cooled down a little, Noah ate lunch in the car while Brad checked everything out. He did some kind of mechanical magic to make it chill out until we could get home.

Meanwhile, I was planning on how we were going to make the most of this.
No way did we pay $25 for 5 minutes of zoo time.

I convinced Brad to let us upgrade our tickets and go on a wagon ride. I knew Noah would love it, and the next one was only a 30 minute wait. This was a tad risky, because it was Noah's nap time. But I decided it was worth the couple of random fussy moments... mostly which occurred because he wanted to run where he wasn't supposed to.
But he was fine once we got going. He wasn't too interested in feeding the animals anymore. By this time, they were old news. That was until the emus snuck their heads up under my seat and decided to help themselves to the food Noah had dropped. They have to be the freakiest looking animal, but he thought they were hysterical.
Unfortunately, I didn't get too many pictures while on the wagon. I was too busy trying to keep Noah from falling all over the place when we were moving.