The Tolbert Family: Elephants and Puppets!

We have some great friends here in Camden who all have little girls around the same ages as Anna Kate and Caroline. Usually we just get together at the park, or the library, or one anothers' houses for Small Group Bible Study on Sunday nights, but over the last couple weeks the moms decided to do a couple of special outings with the girls!

The first was a trip to the zoo! We love the zoo and have a yearly membership, but hadn't been much over the summer since it has been so hot. So we had a nice cool morning (which actually turned pretty warm by the time we left, but oh well) and had a great time. One highlight of the trip was the elephants. Here are three of the five girls that went (the three that weren't strapped to their mommies in Ergo carriers!).

Alice, Anna Kate, Annie

(I guess we like "A" names)

After that we did a terrible job of photo documentation (mostly because keeping track of all five little girls was a full-time job)! But trust me, we had a great time!

A few days later my friend Mary and I decided to take our four girls to the Columbia Marionette Theater - something which neither one of us had done previously. We heard that they do $5 shows for kids a few weekday mornings a month, so we thought we would give it a try! Now, we thought we were going to see "Pinocchio" because that was what was advertised on the website. Turns out, they didn't update the site to say that they were actually doing "Hansel and Gretel" - a little scarier than we had intended! But the girls did great! I had warned Anna Kate on the way there that if there were any scary parts in Pinocchio, she should just giggle because it would just be silly and pretend. So, when Hansel and Gretel started traipsing through the dark, scary forest, she started laughing very nervously! Of course, the story ended happily and the girls thought the puppets were just great! Even Caroline thought the show was pretty neat!

Here are AK and Alice ready for the show to begin.

After the show, the puppeteers let each child try working a marionette

The theater had some pretty neat thrones that the girls wanted to try out

Caroline wanted to be a big girl too!

After the show we headed down to the riverfront park for a picnic. Here are a couple of the best buddies walking through the park! Anna Kate wanted to do a silly face instead of smile...