Visiting the Animal Park

Today we took Miranda to the "Duck and Deck" Animal Park (i.e. petting zoo).  The owner of the park is a long-time supporter of the orphanage.  Miranda got to see lots of new animals at the park.  They had different varieties of ducks, geese, and chickens, as well as pigs, goats, burros, emus, cows, donkeys, ponies, rabbits, and a few others.  At first Miranda was rather timid.  She would step back whenever the animals came near the fence.  Then two young goats managed to climb out of their pens and come beg for food (each child received a bag of pellet feed).  Miranda definitely did not like the goats coming right up to her and wanted me to hold her away from them.  However, she got really excited when she saw the rabbits.  After seeing the rabbits she was much more interested in all the other animals.  (She even watched the young goats as they climbed on the slide at the playground but was still a little shy of them).  She also seemed to like the pigs.  We fed the pigs a banana peel and she thought this was great.  Then she "helped" feed the burro some of the pellet feed.  Dad would give her a handful of pellets and she would hand them to me and I would feed the burro.  She wanted to feed the pellets herself but wouldn't open up the palm of her hand.  We also noticed that she tried a few pellets to see how they tasted (even though I tried to stop her from putting them in her mouth).  Ugh!

Miranda has definitely gotten comfortable riding in her car seat and climbed right up into it this morning.  She dozed off in the seat both to and from the animal park.

I took some photos of houses that we pass as we leave the orphanage.  Most of the houses are rectangular, but some are round.  Some people believe that evil spirits lurk in the corners of the house so they build a round house.