Grandma visits, zoo trips, butchers and bears, oh my!

First off, congrats Cochran Family on your first year of raising and butchering your own chickens. Super awesome job, we hope to follow your lead sometime in the future.

Our deepest condolences to Sarah, who I'm sure looked something like this...

But I'm also sure she really was a trooper despite her extremely tender heart. I'm glad it was a successful endeavor.

Henry's weekend was significantly more fun. My mother-in-law Sharon (who is great with Henry) came to stay for the weekend and took him on his first zoo trip.

Grandma Betty, left. Gammie Sharon, right.
Obviously they are super fun.

The zoo was awesome, despite my lack of photo documentation.

He didn't trust the elephants at all, and kept whipping around whenever his back was to them.

He loved the monkeys and the otters the most. 

I ended up with four pictures of Henry:

Henry arrives at the zoo,

Henry sees giant reptile,

Henry eats lunch with gusto,

and Henry sleeps.

 We also met a sweet little owl. Sharon gave him a little hoot to make him look for his picture, which got us a lecture about how owls who sound like that also happen to eat this little guy.

Oops...

But he did look for the picture.

Can you see the terror in his little eyes?

I cannot...

but apparently it was there.

I must need to shape up my animal whispering.

They also had a black bear exhibit, which Wesley was a little snarky about, with black bears that were so much fatter than our little guys. I guess our garbage is not providing enough calories.

Eating leftover mac n' cheese.

This cub is one of at least four bears in the area right now. He keeps getting onto our porch and peering in our back door, which is incredibly unnerving. He isn't afraid of people, but he is terrified of cars.

(I've been working on my best car impression, just in case you were wondering.)