Air Zoo, the Bird Sanctuary and a birthday...

Happy Birthday, Autumn Rose Laitala!

Saturday was Autumn's Birthday. She was busy with her husband and they went ghost hunting in the evening so we celebrated on Sunday. I'll have to get a photo of the cute Carnival Chalkware prizes and antique tray we got her for her birthday from Autumn to show you.

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Saturday we went on a family field trip to the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area to visit the Air Zoo and the MSU Kellogg Bird Sanctuary.

They had really neat old planes and remind to never take my point and shoot camera on a field trip again, bad photos all day! Anyways, I won't bore you with a bunch of bad airplane photos. Noah and Brad rode in a rocket ship simulator and I turned a shade of green on the hot air balloon ride. 20 minutes later... feeling back to my old self.

Here's Noah chumming around with some WWII soldiers in the English country side.

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Then we drove a short way to the Bird Sanctuary.

I visited here when I was Noah's age. We went to a week long camp in 5th grade and one day we visited here and the Kellogg cereal factory. The Sanctuary was my favortie part of the trip.

Noah with a coffee can of corn for the water fowl.

One good photo!

Stupid camera, but this guy was so funny, he wouldn't stop honking!

Hello Mr. Eagle, you are amazing!

A tiny-wee Screech Owl.

Here's what Noah was waiting for... his favorite, the Great Horned Owls!

We were there at feeding time, can you see the white rat?

A beautiful Red tail Hawk.

This is some sort of pheasant from China. Check out that tail!

Trying to photograph the birds in cages was hard. The camera wanted to focus the fence not the bird. And then I heard Autumn's voice in my head telling me "Step back mom and then zoom in on the bird." It worked much better. I'm so glad my kids are with me even when they are not.

Words to live by.