Zoo!

Last Friday Kevin had an unexpected day off of work, so I knew we HAD to do something fun. My 3 choices were actually the Butterfly Pavilion - somewhere I've never been but heard it's a lot of fun, The Zoo - we haven't been there since Bradley was a baby, or IKEA :) - also never been, but probably the least fun for the kids :) So we decided on the zoo.
I figured with it being a Friday and not a really nice, warm day maybe it wouldn't be too busy, which I love. Poppy decided to come with us too because he hadn't been there for years. We got there and the weather was being really weird, it was really hot when the sun was out, then a huge cloud would come over and it would get really windy and COLD, then it would change again. The kids were super excited and didn't seem to mind that it was pretty chilly at times. After we got there I realized that Bradley decided to wear flip-flops and I was worried about his feet getting cold the whole time. At the very end Gracie noticed and freaked out that he didn't have socks on :) Bradley quickly took over the map duty and was finding all the animals he wanted to see. First on his list was the leopard because he wore a shirt with a leopard on it to show him, but that was way on the other side, so we saw the lions first :)

Then came the dinosaurs - I mean Rhino :) Years and years ago I went to the zoo with my Mom and sisters and I saw what I thought was a statue of a Triceratops - then it moved and freaked me out. I guess it was a Rhino, not a dinosaur, but I've never lived it down. 2 things - when I say 'years and years ago' that this happened it wasn't when I was little, I was probably about 25 at the time :(, BUT in my defense thanks to Bradley I am becoming somewhat of an expert on dinosaurs and even all his dinosaur shows COMPARE Triceratops and Rhinos and talk about how similar they are - so I'm sure a lot of people make that mistake :)

"Look kids, the dinosaur is MOVING!"

My kids have a thing for trains, they always have. I used to go out of my way to avoid trains - I've actually always been scared of them myself. But now, I'm a Train Chaser :) Anytime we are out driving and my kids hear a train I go looking for it and try to find the best spot possible to get as close to it as we can and sit and watch as it goes by. It just makes their day. Anytime we drive over the train tracks we all ask each other, "Which way did you look? Did you see a train?" The other day Kevin was out working and came upon a train and even video taped it for the kids to show them later - that's how much they love them :) So... there's a train at the zoo. It ended up consuming all their thoughts. It's like they couldn't even concentrate on the animals, all they wanted to see was that train. They kept listening for it and looking the the tracks, wherever we went. We didn't ride on it this time, I figure that's something they can look forward to next time :) And of course, Bradley being so sensitive to noises kept covering his ears when it came by (even though it wasn't that loud :) ) and of course Gracie just does whatever he does. Sammie saw them covering their ears and she covered hers too, except she does it wrong and puts her hands on the top of her head :)

 

Playing the drums :)

Looking at the monkeys

He reminds me of Ludo from The Labyrinth movie with David Bowie :)

We went into this rain forest exhibit where you walk through on this path and there are birds in trees and on the ground all around the path. We were the only ones in there and Bradley started following this bird on the path, then it walked into the mud area of the 'rainforest'. Bradley stepped one foot into the mud and the bird FREAKED OUT. It started squawking really loudly and scared Bradley to death. It knew that he wasn't supposed to cross that line, he needed to stay on the path :)

Gracie trying to figure out the map

Bradley was very disgusted by how BIG elephant dung is :)

Finally we get to the leopard, and he was eating lunch

Fist pump for SUCCESS! He was even talking to it so softly saying, "Look, I have you on my shirt!"  :)

We went into the aquarium building and you're supposed to leave strollers outside. I was being paranoid and untrustworthy and tried to run through it to get back outside to make sure it was still there and when I came out there was a family staring at the stroller. There was a squirrel in the bottom of our stroller stealing our snacks. We had bags of nuts and Cheerios and goldfish, and when he saw me he tried to grab the whole bag of goldfish and make a run for it, I ran over there and got him to drop it just in time :) I bet they get a LOT of snacks like that!

Might be one of my all time favorite pictures of them together :)

We had so much fun and we actually got the membership pass this year so I'm excited to go back soon!!