The children learn about elk

I haven't seen much of my kids this week. It's VBS at our church. So we are there all morning, have naps in the afternoon and then I get to hang out with them for just a few hours each night. Although last night they all went and played in the girls room so I didn't even get to hang out with them (wow, that starts early!). So, anyway, since I haven't seen them, I don't have very many stories on them. I do have some stories on the 3rd graders that I've been hanging out with at VBS (like the time one of the girls wrote her name on her arm with a sharpie when I wasn't looking; then I told her it was permanent and wouldn't come off so during the scripture memory time she licked her arm to prove to me that it would come off. Then her teeth and mouth were all red with sharpie marker), but I didn't think their parents would appreciate me telling stories on all of them. Since we haven't seen much of each other, we went for a drive on Wednesday night. We went to a different park in the area and as soon as we drove in we noticed that they had "wild" animals or at least that is what the sign on the fence said. It was near the entrance and we didn't see any animals at all, so we continued our drive. Sometime while we were touring the rest of the park, the "wild" animals emerged so as we were leaving we saw them. It was an elk and a deer. (Yep--those were the "wild" animals.) So that explained the huge fence and large warning signs. (Joe & I were convinced that there had to be some other animals in there, but all we found were some squirrels and a few baby bunnies.) We eventually did see some female elk as well. So our children got to learn about elk on Wednesday night. Here were some of the questions we had to field:

• So, if they live in the mountains, how did they get here?
• How do they stay warm in the mountains?
• Where are they? I can't see them!
• Is that a baby elk? (No that is a buck deer.)
• Will they eat me?
• What's that little brown thing? (that would be the buck deer)
• Why are their necks so big?
• That looks like one of their babies. (you would think they'd never seen a deer before!)
• Are the antlers heavy?
• So they call them cows and bulls?
• Why don't they have horns? (speaking of the cows--not the moo variety--girl elk)

As we were leaving, Ashley launched into a dissertation about how God made us with little necks because we don't have "horns" that we carry around. As she said, "that was very smart because we would look funny with big necks and antlers!"