Status Quo

Andrew had his monthly eye appointment with Dr. Mazow. While the very optimistic(we love this about him) Dr. Mazow believes Andrew is still improving he is still testing at the same acuity as a month ago, 20/60. We are continuing with the patching for another month to see if he will improve or if we have reached a plateau. Likely we will begin talking about surgery options at our next visit. We ask for your continued prayers as we trust the Lord to lead us through this decision making process to help give Andrew the best possible vision. He is such a trooper! While he does not like to wear his patch...he does and he never complains. It is as if he knows how important this is for him to wear...he has an amazing attitude about it that we believe could only come from the Lord. So we proceed for the 3rd consecutive month of patching all waking hours everyday.

Kathlena did not have her appointment as we had scheduled. A series of scheduling issues on our end and Dr. Mazow's had us postpone Kathlena's appointment until next month...perhaps a blessing in disguise. Although, Kathlena was trying to help Andrew see some of the pictures by calling them out while he was being tested...we quickly assured her that her time would soon come. Big brother appreciated the gesture though :)

Now our usual after our appointment routine is to head over to the Museum district since we are already downtown and have a picnic lunch before heading to the Zoo. We are making good use of our Zoo Pass. We were disappointed though since it was cloudy and threatening to rain the 11 day old baby giraffe was not visible for us to see nor the baby Safica Lemur. Fortunately, though we were able to watch via YouTube, but it would have been great to see them in person. Well maybe we will get to see them next time. We also spent quite a bit of time seeing the Primates. We started a new BFIAR book called Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. It is an adorable little book about a peddler who sells caps and gets them snatched up by some curious little monkeys. We had fun monkeying around and watching the Mandrills, Lemurs, and Orangutans.

Here are a few pictures Emily captured for us at the Zoo.
Mom reading our new BFIAR book, Caps for Sale



Resting under a big tree like the peddler in

Caps For Sale!

Andrew loved watching this funny Mandrill, he had quite the
personality.


With the threat of rain looming over us we decided to check out a tip a friend gave me that The Museum of Natural Science has free admission to it's permanent main exhibits on Tuesdays from 2pm-8pm. It was fun since Andrew and Kathlena have not been before and it has been ages since Emily and J.Michael have been so it was like a first for us all. We were able to see how enormous dinosaurs would be standing next to us. We spent most of our time though touring the Energy exhibit. It was really informative and we even rode in a Geovator, which is a simulator that lets you experience what it would be like to go hundreds of feet below the surface on a drilling expedition to find oil. We also toured the Gem and Mineral exhibit...this was a favorite for Emily and I. It was so neat to see all of these huge pieces of rock that encased some of the world's most beautiful gems. We also went into the vault to see the collection of precious jewels. There were two pieces from St. Petersburg, Russia that were once worn by royalty.

It was a good day...almost all fell asleep on the long ride home in traffic, but it was so worth it! We will have more on our visit next month until then we will keep checking on those Zoo updates and plan our Butterfly Exhibit trip. Spring is such a wonderful time of year!

1st Trip to the Zoo

The girls are enjoying their buck sticks from Daddy's deer for
lunch. When we arrived we had our picnic lunch at Herman
Park first then set out to spend the afternoon at the zoo.

Where are the prairie dogs...apparently this exhibit is under
construction but they had fun playing "prairie dog".

Black bear taking it easy and allowing onlookers a chance

for photo ops.

A recently acquired leopard. Notice the extra skin...

they have put him on a diet as he was apparently getting to
fat...only in America!

We got a rare glimpse of the tiger moving around and getting

a drink of water. They are such beautiful and graceful animals.

Andrew runs up to this fence and goes yummy cows...we

like to eat the cows! These were called Ankoloes I think?

I think Andrew is right these would probably be good eating.

A margay getting his goat's milk lunch.

Look at those paws!

*remember to turn off music to listen to video it is in the sidebar of the blog, click pause on the playlist.

The ocelot does not like to be squirted in the mouth with

the goat's milk but prefers to lick it off of the stump.

A beautiful cat.

A fussa...I don't think I have ever seen or heard of this

animal before. This is where we met Richard the zoo keeper.

The cheetahs stretching. The Houston Zoo has a large variety

of wild cats which is wonderful for our family as we love them.

"What stinks?" Ahh! yes, the new elephant

exhibit. Even a new mansion doesn't keep

these animals from smelling!

Swimming with the piranhas...yikes!

Playing in the mangrove roots. The new rain forest

exhibit is very nice.

"We found Nemo, and another one too!" "Dorey also"

Andrew was so cute when he saw the clown fish in the

aquarium in the Rain forest exhibit.

A rare glimpse of Lou the hedgehog as she has been retired

and only "lives" at the zoo. We were told that she is old and

has done "her time" so she is no longer on exhibit just living

her days out in a roomy cage behind closed doors. The zoo

keeper brings her out on occasion to let the kids pet her and

see a real hedgehog.

Kathlena and I petting the spiky hedgehog from Madagascar.

Andrew taking a turn to pet Lou.

A Shiflet tradition is to collect smashed pennies from the souvenir penny machines. It is a great inexpensive and fun souvenir for kids to collect. When we were traveling to Russia we actually found one in Germany. We found a website off of this one and it tells the locations of them from all over the world. From this website we found out that there was one in Russia...bummer would've been neat to have some from there.

We waited out the rain as long as possible and finally set out to the Houston Zoo on Thursday, Nov. 13. It was still overcast and a little cool in shade which made for a great day to stroll through the zoo. Andrew and Kathlena had never been to a Zoo before and it was so fun to try and explain this whole concept to them. At first Andrew was a little nervous as he didn't like the idea of "seeing" wild animals. Once he understood that they were in cages and could not get out he began to get excited at the thought of seeing some the animals he has only heard about in books.

It has been a while since the rest of us have been to the Houston Zoo too and much has changed. I must say it has definitely changed for the better! The zoo has recently acquired grizzly bears and new leopards. We had a great opportunity to see a Fussa, Margay and Ocelot as Richard the zoo keeper was out feeding them and Andrew got to ask him lots of questions to which Richard was more than happy to share about the animals he takes care of. The Houston Zoo has also recently built a huge Asian Elephant exhibit (to which no $$$ was spared at $5 million) Sadly, one of the newest born in captivity elephants, Mac at 18 months had just died the previous weekend from a virus. There were still 4-5 elephants in the exhibit though. Our trip was great fun. I have missed going to the zoo and glad to have such a nice zoo close by. I am sure we will be going again soon.