Southwick's Zoo, 7th Anniversary, Name Announcement, and Turkey Tacos

On the plate:  Turkey tacos

Soundtrack to cook to:  Ben Folds Presents:  University a Cappella!  If you're a Ben Folds fan, then you'll absolutely love this album, as it is a collection of awesome university a cappella groups singing Ben Folds songs.  Genius!

On one of our little family day trips, I decided to take us to Southwick's Zoo in Mendon, MA.  It's a little bit of a trek (it took us about 1 hour to drive there one way), so we went on a Saturday morning, bright and early.  We got there right when they opened and were delighted to see the huge variety of animals that they have at the zoo!  Also, a huge highlight to our trip was that there were many occasions in which we were able to interact directly with the animals (which was very exciting for Alexander AND for us, too!).

Alexander checking out the kangaroos in the entrance.

That was one HUGE capybara!!

Yikes!  Alexander, don't get too close!

Turtles!!  (They were absolutely humongous tortoises.)

Alexander liked checking out the rabbits, but was still too short
to reach over and pet them - so Joseph did. :)

This zoo had a HUGE assortment of monkeys, which was a lot of
fun to see.  Alexander loved looking at the monkeys.

Joseph and Alexander checking out another monkey exhibit.

This one cracked me up, and was eerily humanlike.  He loved
his veggies and Alexander was excited to point that out.

"Monkey play with toy!  Yes!  That's right!" (Alexander's words).

Our next stop was the petting zoo area.  The goats were incredibly
friendly and came right up to us.  The baby goats were so sweet and
snuggly, while the adult goats looked up to us and if we didn't have
food, they moved on.

Alexander thoroughly enjoyed petting the baby goats.

The baby pigs were absolutely adorable!!

Normally Alexander isn't as brave, but I guess he figured if the
animals were smaller than him, then it was okay to pet them. :)

"Llama!!  Just like Llama Llama Misses Mama!"
Alexander was very excited to see the llamas, but
we ran to his side right away to tell him that he was
not allowed to pet the llama (he was quite disappointed).

Our little monkey looking at more monkeys.

It was a pretty hot day, so here's our little sweaty guy checking out
the prairie dogs.

"Warkhogs!  Like Pumba!!"  (The Lion King is one of Alexander's
favorite movies and Pumba, the warthog, always makes him crack up.
He just has a little difficulty saying the word "warthog.")

A former student of mine gave me a large collection of Zoobooks
magazines and Alexander has been incredibly interested in them.
We recently read about the dromedary and bactrian camels and
were very excited that the zoo had BOTH types of camels.  He stood
in awe and had a lot of fun watching them.

Checking out the bactrian camels

Joseph and Alexander looking at the tigers

Joseph and Alexander checking out the white rhinos.

Here was part 2 of the animal experience:  The deer forest!  The
deer literally come right up to you.  They were very docile, but
quite intimidating as they're pretty tall and their antlers are so large
as well.  They were very sweet, though.  I personally had a hard
time not freaking out, but kept it together to show Alexander how to
be brave.  

See what I mean?  I sucked it up and allowed the deer to approach us
without making a Nikki-shaped cloud of dust as I ran away screaming
like a banshee.  Having a child has forced me to face my fears because
I want to be as good of an example as I can be (however, if I see a spider
in the house, I'm running away and asking someone to take care of it for me).  

We got the last two tickets to the giraffe encounter for that morning!
How fortuitous!!  At 11:30 a.m., we joined a small group of people
that got to feed the giraffes for the morning!  It was so much fun!
Those giraffes are incredibly strong.  It was almost like playing tug of
war as we were feeding the leaves off of a branch to the giraffes.
We had a blast! 

See?!  Look!  I'm seriously bracing myself because the giraffe was
wrapping its tongue around the leaves and pulling at the branch.
I think we had just as much fun as Alexander did during this activity.

That was one happy and well-fed giraffe. :)

As you can see by the little hand at the end of the branch,
Alexander was "helping" to feed the giraffe as well.  :)

We were one happy (and hot and sweaty) family at the giraffe encounter.

Yikes!  You mean I have to make dinner too?  Hmmm....let's see what we have in the fridge/freezer and I'll see what I can throw together.  (I can't tell you how many times I've had to say that recently.)  Okydoky!  It's taco night, everyone!!  

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground turkey meat
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 pepper, diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 8 oz of cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 3 roma tomatoes, chopped (keep the seeds)
• 1 small can of tomato sauce
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 2 tsp cumin (one of my favorite spices)
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• Whole wheat tortillas
• Shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and lettuce (optional)

Chop up your vegetables while you are browning the meat.
You can add any type of vegetable that you would like.

Once the turkey meat is browned, add the seasonings.  Then,
put the vegetables into the pan and cook for another 8 minutes or
until the vegetables are cooked through.

Right before you serve, I like to add some freshly chopped tomatoes
and 1 can of tomato sauce to add some moisture to the whole mix.

I chose to serve this on a whole wheat tortilla with a little bit
of shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream (or you could use fat free
Greek yogurt), the turkey vegetable mixture, and top it off with some lettuce.
*I personally, like to add some pickled jalapenos to mine, because I like
spicy food.
This was absolutely delicious and a huge hit with the family.  It took
about 30 minutes from start to finish and had enough for leftovers the
next day.  In the past, if we only have a little bit of meat leftover,
we've made taco salads, which are equally delicious as well.  Just make
a regular salad, then heat up the meat, put it on top of the salad, and put
sour cream and salsa as your dressing.  Delish!

Since this would be tough and messy for Alexander to eat, we made
him a "taco bowl."  We simply heated up some brown rice, then put
the meat mixture, and a little bit of cheese and he absolutely loved it!

On July 31, 2012, Joseph and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary!!  It's incredible how much time has passed and how much we've done/accomplished during that time.  It's been so great, creating this life and this family with my best friend, and I can't wait to see what next adventure our life has in store for us!!  

Two crazy kids gettin' hitched at Purdue, our alma mater.  It was
very fun and special day. :)

In celebration, my sister so graciously offered to babysit Alexander so that we could go out and celebrate.  We went to one of our favorite restaurants in Boston called Menton, and decided to go for the chef's tasting menu.  We are two people that absolutely LOVE to eat (much to our dismay) and love, love, love to eat good food as one way to treat ourselves.  This was a 12 course tasting menu and we started at about 8:45 p.m.  After we made our decision to celebrate in a yummy way, I texted my sister to tell her that we would be a little bit later than we had intended.  In order to make her time worthwhile, I decided to entice her by saying that when we got back home, we would tell her our name choice for our next child (because we hadn't told anyone and she would be the first to hear).  She took the bait! :)  

Me (28 weeks pregnant) and Joseph, ready to
go out to our anniversary dinner. 

Awww!  So precious!  They wrote this on our plates
for the dessert course. :)

After our incredibly decadent anniversary meal, we rolled ourselves back home (and were about ready to pass out because it was WAY past our bedtime) and got back around 12 a.m.  We told Kristen our next child's name, she squealed with joy, and then was on her way home.  I figured, my sister cannot keep a secret if her life depended on it (a family trait, as my father and I are the same way), so we decided to tell the rest of the family the next day.  

We came up with this name combination months ago.  We developed it so quickly that we figured it was a fluke and that we would find something else that we liked if we just waited a little bit longer.  Months passed, and we still hadn't heard any other names that we were interested in, so we just decided that we would name our second son William Asher Franses.  We wanted a strong sounding name and liked that the name Asher meant "fortunate; blessed; happy."  We plan on calling our little one "Will" and are excited to welcome our little one into this world!!

In other exciting news, we've just started potty training Alexander because he was showing us all of the signs (for the most part) that he was ready.  We got him so pull-ups (we call it a big boy diaper and he is SO excited to wear it) and off we went.

Here's our proud little guy after he had just used
the "big boy potty" for the first time.  It was so great
to see the huge smile on his face and to hear his excitement
in his own accomplishment and the pride that he had in
himself.  Let's cross our fingers and hope this goes well!

Well, that's enough excitement for now!  William is kicking up a storm and is telling me that it's time to go to bed.  I'm so happy that I was able to share this exciting news with all of you.  There's a lot of wonderful things going on in the Franses household right now and I'm doing my best to document them to report to y'all!  Until next time...

Love and kisses,

Nikki