Memorial Day bliss!

We had a blast on Memorial day with Grandma and Grandpa Smith. They took the three of us to the Virginia Safari Park and it was quite the experience! Aubrey absolutely loved the animals and got excited everytime one came up to the car. She would take one piece of grain from the bucket and hold it out for the animals to come and eat. Unfortunately, mommy is a bit overprotective and made sure the animals mouths never came close to her tiny fingers. The animals loved eating out of the buckets, and one animal even stole the bucket of feed out of Ryan's hands. One bucket down, three left. Then, the same animal went up to my mom and stole the bucket of feed out of her hands too. Another bucket down. Needless to say, we laughed until our sides hurt, and made lots of new "friends". We will certainly miss Buena Vista, and living so close to family! Enjoy some pictures from our trip to the park and then scroll to the end for the update on our job search -- we've finally made up our minds (don't skip to the end :)!

Yes, Aubrey is out of her car seat, but that is kosher at the safari park. It just wouldn't have been the same sitting in a car seat while the animals walked around outside the car. She loved it!

I've never seen a zebra this close up before! It was neat for Aubrey to see some of the animals we read about in her books up close and personal.
An ostrich...this was another first for me.
Watoosee catle...never even heard of one until I saw it at the park. They were pretty intimidating and one of them tried to attack my mom and get her food. It was funny to watch my mom pull back and roll up her window as fast as she did!
This llama looked like it had a glass eye, so naturally we had to take a picture and document it :)!
Here is a video of mom feeding one of the ostriches. They were a riot to watch eat!




Ok, so the promised update. Ryan interviewed in Atlanta, Roanoke, and St. Louis. St. Louis was our number one choice, for a number of reasons, and we had already heard back from the other two (they both wanted him). Wachovia Securities flew him out to St. Louis on a Wed. and they called him on Friday to offer him the position. The official offer wasn't available until after he passed his drug/fingerprint test and backround check (we were really nervous about that ;). Well, they finally came back with the official offer (numbers and dates and all) today and was actually considerably more than we were expecting. Ryan starts his new job with Wachovia Securities on June 16 (only two weeks away). Aubrey and I will stay here in VA (for insurance purposes) until the baby is born in July. We will really miss Ryan, but are so proud of him and how hard he has worked to provide for our growing family! So, if anyone is ever in the St. Louis area...you have some friends to visit and a place to stay :)!