Tuesday, December 21, 2010

An afternoon with the girls

Some big horses, playing at McDonald's and feeding a few birds.

We decided to take our two oldest granddaughters, Emma and Aurora, out for some fun this afternoon. We've been meaning to do this for awhile but just have not done it. First stop was the Express Barn. The Express Personnel Services company is owned by a guy named Bob Funk. He also owns some huge farms where he raises registered Black Angus cattle. (An article in this mornings paper showed that he was the 57th largest land owner in the United States.) In addition to his cattle operation he has a large team of Clydesdale horses that appear in parades around the country pulling a large wagon. He has his specially built barn open to the public to see the horses six days a week. The barn was built by hand by a group of Amish folks that came from Iowa to build it. These are beautiful horses in addition to being huge. The girls really enjoyed seeing the horses plus the other livestock on the place. This included a Zebra and some miniature horses. Each horse has it's own stall and are very friendly. Most will come to the door of the stall to allow you to pet them, as "Elvis" did here in the picture. Others just stood back and watched us. Marty would not come close but stood their twitching his nose at us. After touring the barn we went outside to look over the other animals and other items on the farm. The girls got a chance to board a stagecoach. Since both girls are cat lovers they had a big time playing with the friendly barn cats that were on the premises.

After leaving the farm we headed back into Oklahoma City and stopped at McDonald's for a quick snack. The girls had a great time playing on the indoor climbing toy for an hour or so. All refreshed we headed to Lake Hefner, one of the city reservoirs, after stopping by a local grocery store for a loaf of bread, to feed the birds. We drove around the lake to Stars and Stripes Park where the largest collection of birds hang out. Here we found an abundance of ducks, Canadian Geese and seagulls. We spent a while feeding bits of bread to the birds. The ducks and geese would come right up to us begging for a treat. The large geese can be pretty intimidating but one would eat right out of your hand. Aurora was the only one brave enough to hold out her hand to feed this goose. The seagulls would fly above us and grab the bread out of the air when we threw it up toward them. This was a great outing with two of our girls. Something we need to do more often.

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