Farewell To Olivia!

Our dear friends, Stacey and Elijah Tafoe just moved from San Fran to her home town in Tennessee. They have a daughter, Olivia, who is just 5 weeks older than the twins so they are all best buddies. For the past 2 1/2 years there have been four toddlers, Caleb, Olivia, Cameron and Timo, all the same age that play together at church, meet for play dates and celebrate birthdays together...so we took a day last week to have a final play date with them all, one last time. We chose Coyote Point in San Mateo!
Cameron, Timo and Olivia started out with the air tubes and then fog machine...trying to figure out how it worked...
All four of them pulled every bottle of colored water out of the color spectrum wall and put every bottle back...great job cleaning up guys!
Timo working on getting all his gears to move together...he's such a mechanics boy!

Lunchtime! The moms have learned by now, if you bring something fun to eat for your child, you need to bring extra for all the other kids too or it just gets ugly. So we had plenty of string cheese, yogurt tubes and fruit leather to go round! (and a special Thank You to Ana, Caleb's mom, for bringing lunch for the ladies...I always forget to pack lunch for me!)

After lunch we went to see all the animals...waiting for the coyote to make an appearence but he seemed to be busy napping.

Timo and Cameron have learned about echoes from watching Dora, which they were more than happy to explain and demonstrate in the little cave. I tried to take a video but it was so crazy with all the kids yelling and running in and out of the cave. I was lucky to get one pic of them all somewhat standing still.

Here they all are in the bird viewing area. It took a lot to get this one picture! (the little boy is Evan, Caleb's little brother)
Looking over one bridge at the waterfall and on another, watching the Keeper feed the turtles. I just have to give extra props to Olivia's mom, Stacey...she was there with her 3 week old new born son, Isaiah. See her in the second pic with Isaiah in the sling...I forget how small babies are!

They all were memorized by the feeding of the baby mountain lions...these two were found hurt in the wild and brought to the center to be cared for and they are now dependent on man for food...they were being fed dead rats and other small rodents--ick! I don't think the kids knew what was being thrown to the lions but us mom's did and we had to stand back!
Cameron was totally into the otters and fish...she was actually trying to talk to them through the glass and I think she thought they understood her!
I wanted to get one last photo of everyone saying goodbye but the light sprinkles we were having turned into a down pour in a matter of minuets...so we all took off running to our cars. But here is an outtake of the kiddies!
Bye Bye Olivia...we love you and we'll miss growing up with you!! But we know your Mommy and Daddy are walking in God's plan for your life and we pray for you, your Mommy and Daddy and your baby brother every night! We can't wait to see you this summer in Dollywood!