Whitlock Weekend – Oceanic Wilderness

Over the last weekend my brother and sister in law came down with my niece and nephew to visit as was seen in Monday’s post on meeting Cleetus, the neighborhood donkey.

Before they came I Googled some places to check out. Despite having lived in the Houston area during college, I was mostly in Galveston and familiar with areas around Galveston county. Now I am on the north side of Houston and everything is new to me again. I came up with Dewbery Farm since my niece loves animals and outdoor activities. It turned out to be a great experience—expect to spend some dough if you have several kids! There’s an entrance fee and while some of the activities are free there are several that require tokens, meaning dropping some more cash.

First Zoe had to hang out with Samson for awhile. Apparently he is “My best old friend” to her. I think he probably thinks otherwise, but he definitely tolerates her a lot more than Leo does. Leo gets spastic around her and doesn’t like it when she moves fast and the consequences are sharp claws being flung at her. It stinks because she really wants to get close to him but he just doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.

And then of course there was Little Brother, Grayson, who is now almost three months old. Ohhh, he is so sweet! And smells so good. I might have to use Baby Magic all the time to keep the smell around. He definitely makes one want to have babies, especially since he is a pretty mellow kid.

Every time I see a different photo of Grayson his resemblance changes. Sometimes he looks like my great-grandfather, my mom’s mother’s father (follow that?), then at times he looks like one of my parents or his own dad.

Part of the ‘free’ at Dewberry Farms is that you get a hay ride. Hay is on short order this year with the drought so we had to sit on benches, but it was still neat since we toured the Christmas tree farm area and then visited the pumpkins patch. Pumpkins were heavily discounted, it being a week after Halloween.

Zoe loved going up ‘Fort Dew Hickey’, though it was crawling with 5-12 year olds and she gets spooked by lots of kids so her dad had to take her around the fort.

The air pillows were loads of fun until one bounce resulted in a bit lip that sprouted a bit of blood.

Stephanie was trying to hide behind Grayson as I took a photo! Sneaky, sneaky!!

Me taking a photo of my brother…

And his photo of me!

The best part was Zoe riding on two ponies! She *LOVES* horses and got one of those ‘life sized’ mechanical, stuffed ponies you can ride for her birthday. His name is Butterscotch. I think these ponies topped the day off!

Our local garden center put out a bale of hay and made it into a turkey so I thought it was perfect to stop and get a photo of Zoe in front of it. She’d about had it by then, though!