My boy's worms

Yesterday we did son's big fourth birthday party at InBio Parque. It was great! I highly recommend it to anyone here looking for something different for a kid's party. A couple of suggestions, if you do go this route:

• Make sure you order food for the adults. We did, and it costs extra, but after taking a tour in the hot sun, you at least need to provide the big kids with something.
• Try to get them to set the kids' food out while they are taking the tour. They didn't do that for us, and both kids and adults started munching on the bags of chips at the table. The guy kept telling me that the food was for after the tour, and I was like, well, it's after, where's the food? Eventually it got there, but it was more than a little irritating to have to wait. The kids were hungry when they got back, and the food should have been ready.
• The games are dumb. Opt for a longer tour to include both the pond and the butterfly garden.

Otherwise, everyone had a good time and seemed to enjoy themselves, kids and adults alike.

A bilingual guide took the kids to see the farm animals, where they had a ball feeding baby goats and snuggling baby rabbits. I almost bought a golden Polish cockerel chick, but didn't, because we really have no place for a rooster at the moment and without a hen, he will soon get pent-up sexual aggression off of his chest by pecking at me. No thanks. Someday, though, I would really like to have chickens again. Hey, if you want Polish chickens, they do sell them at the farm. The roo chick was 4,000 colones; I think hens are a little more, and full-grown hens and roos quite a bit more.

At the butterfly farm, the guide was explaining the life cycle of butterflies when, at one point, she told the kids that caterpillers looked something like worms. Son piped up and said, "I have worms!" The guide sort of looked at him sideways, saying, "Uh... okay..." and then son continued, saying, "They live in the dirt in our yard!" Ah, okay, those kind of worms... Ha ha...

Oh, and they misspelled his name on his birthday cake. Good thing he can't read yet.

My mother-in-law disappeared toward the end, so while esposo was off hunting for her, my mom and I watched the farmer guy attempt to chase the pot-bellied pig into its pen. The pig, which, as you know, is much, much smarter than a dog (and who would eat a dog? but that's a whole other post...), was having none of it. Every time the pig outmaneuvered the man, the small crowd that had gathered shouted Ole!

Blue morpho butterfly at the butterfly garden

A resident goat gets a pet from P.