Tropical Winter

Jill bought a pineapple at the store earlier this week, which turned out to be fantastic. As luck would have it, she also had her hands on a food magazine with pineapple desserts. The result?

Pineapple empanaditas:

Amazing that we can make a tropical fruit dessert in Missouri only a day after a major snowstorm shuts down the entire city. They were delicious. Logan said "this is the best dessert I've ever had in my life." Of course, he says that about all kinds of things at least 3-4 times a week.

Ever Been Stalked By A Cheetah?

It's a little unsettling.


We're in the midst of a weekend of unseasonably warm weather here in St. Louis (it's almost 80 today) and to take advantage of it we took the boys out to the zoo yesterday. There's a new amphibian exhibit that we wanted to see, and Liam wanted to check out the elephants. So off we went.

Liam picked up a little stick on the way into the zoo which became his "shooter" for the day. He got really excited when he saw any animals. Then he shot them with his stick. I'm not sure we're doing a good job with the whole idea of zoos and conservation and nature appreciation and whatnot.

Most of the animal exhibits were fairly empty, a lot of the animals were either still wintering or just not interested in sharing the warm weather with us.

Until we got to the cheetahs.

The cheetahs

The cheetah exhibit is one of the newer, open area exhibits where the animals have a lot of room to roam and there really isn't much between them and you other than a ditch and a little bit of wire. There were five or six cheetahs out in their enclosure, including a couple that were (and I think this is really the most accurate description) stalking the crowd. Particularly the kids. There were a couple of times that a group of kids would run by and the cheetahs literally locked on like heat-seeking missiles and sprinted along, keeping the kids in sight. One of them looked to be seriously trying to work out how to get over the ditch and into the crowd. It was a little unnerving, but really cool to see. Most of the time the big cats are fairly languid. Not this time.

Afterwards we wandered over to the Asian elephant area, which is home to a new baby elephant born last year. Again serendipity struck and we found ourselves in the midst of an impromptu performance. The trainers were trying to get some of the elephants separated and needed to distract a group of females, so we got a show. The little elephant did a lot of food stealing and was obviously a bit of a stinker. Kids.

The elephants mid-performance

All in all a fun day! Today is even warmer, so instead of having fun we washed the cars and did yard work. Hooray. At least the kids are having a good time. Logan is actually outside playing with other kids instead of hopping in front of the Playstation (it's a miracle!)