A Special Trip With Our Special Lucas...Bearizona

Our original plan while we were in Phoenix was for Les and I to take a quick trip to San Francisco, but then I got to thinking that Les and I will already be leaving the kids when we head to Las Vegas next month, so I decided to change up the plans some. Leaving the kids behind as they get older has become very hard on me. I love spending all of my time with them as they are at such fun ages and they are also old enough (especially Lucas) to notice that we are gone, so it really breaks my heart to be away from them. Between that and how good of a boy Lucas has been with our move and all these recent changes (he has taken to everything so perfectly), I decided Les and I should treat him to a little overnight trip alone with mommy and daddy. I thought it was a beautiful time of year to visit Flagstaff with our sweet 3 year old. Lucas was on cloud 9 when we surprised him with a "special trip for our special boy" as we referred to it. Our first stop on the trip was to this incredible place called Bearizona that my sister recommended us to see. Okay, for all of you Arizona residents, this place was a must see for sure. It's basically a drive through wildlife park. You see everything from sheep, bison, donkeys and of course the main attraction, Black Bears. These animals are free to roam in their natural habitat and they basically can walk up to your car if they want to. It's very cool! At the end, you can park and walk around to the different baby exhibits that they have such as bear cubs, wolves and foxes. I cannot claim these gorgeous pictures below, Les did a great job photographing some of these beautiful animals. He took about a hundred pictures and below are just a few. :)

My very special boy Lucas and myself outside Bearizona. We had such a great weekend spending some alone time with our sweet little boy. I think he felt pretty special too! :)

Okay, these 9 month old twin female black bear cubs were truly the cutest things ever. They were so rambuncious and playful with each other.

One of the black bear cubs. She kept pacing back and forth waiting for her lunch. She was so cute, I felt like hugging her....well, sort of, ha! :)

Yes, we were really this close to this bear. She stood just on the other side of our car door as we were leaving the park. By far the closest I have ever been to a bear and the closest I ever want to be, ha ha! :)

This bear also came pretty close to the car. I think she ended up walking down the roadside.

This cracks me up....I know it's hard to tell, but this bear is asleep with her legs up against the tree, was so funny.

BEAUTIFUL picture of this horned sheep...courtesty of Les photography!

Les also captured this awesome shot of the Bison chilling.