The Nolden Family

We attended the 13th annual JAKES Day at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center this past weekend. JAKES stands for: Juniors Acquiring Knowledge, Ethics, & Sportsmanship. It was a free event for kids and they had a bunch of fun activities. They even fed us lunch. For those of you that live in the area and have kids, I would highly recommend it for next year. Our kids had a GREAT time!!

Larry, Sandi, Seth and Hannah joined us for the adventure. Liz and Megan didn’t think they wanted to get up early on a Saturday to go with us….but now they wish they had gone!

Above: Hannah and Mikayla. They gave all the kids a free T-shirt.

Above: The kids all got to hold a live, slimy snake. I think Seth liked it .

Above: PJ and the snake.

Above: Ashley and the snake.

Above: Two Braves fans (Larry and Frank) and Sandi.

Above: They had several hawks that you could get up close and personal with.

Above: The kids were impressed.

Above: Seth, “Why am I taking a picture with this bird?”

Above: Donovan, “Yeah, I’m with Seth.”

Above: More Snakes.

Above: They had a firing range where the kids could do some target practice. That’s PJ in the cool glasses getting instruction. We discovered that, for some reason, he can’t close JUST his left eye.

Above: Mikayla, Hannah and Donovan taking a turn.

Above: Ashley and Seth decided to try their hand at archery instead. (that’s not Seth in the yellow though…I couldn’t get a good shot of him)

Above: …after our lunch of hotdogs, chips, pop AND a giant Rice Krispie Treat….a child’s dream lunch.

Above: Probably the best part of the festival was the fishing. They provided all of the equipment and even live bait for everyone to fish that wanted to. The kids loved it. Unfortunately, only one fish was caught…by PJ. All the people around us seemed to be catching fish, but we weren’t so lucky. I think we should’ve gone with the crickets instead of the nightcrawlers!

Above: Me showing off my secret tree-catching throw. It worked…I caught a tree!

Above: I believe Sandi was also successful at catching a tree…

Above: When PJ caught our one and only fish…and we were all standing around not really wanting to unhook it…we were very lucky that this girl came walking by at that very moment and said, “Do you want some help?” She actually liked doing it….so we let her .