The ZOO!

We have been talking for quite a while about taking the babies to the zoo.  I like the zoo.  The zoo is on our side of town.   Kids enjoy the zoo.  You can go for a walk at the zoo and not get bored.  And there's cotton candy.

We'd been talking about it, but we hadn't actually joined.  Joe and I had been members a few years back, and we went to the zoo a few times, but our membership had lapsed and we hadn't renewed it.  Serendipitously, we got a phone call a few weeks ago from a telemarketer selling zoo memberships, and so we got a year's membership that will actually last 14 months (that was the deal).  If we go 4 times in those 14 months, it has paid for itself.

My friend Sam and her family went to the zoo last Thursday, and I was going to go with them, but I thought it would be better if Daddy went with the Salvateenies for their first visit.  So we made plans for today, July 1st.  Sam and Junior agreed to come with us, and mid-week another friend's schedule opened up so we were all set to be a group of five babies, three mommies, and one dad.

Everyone was meeting at the zoo and since they were both coming over bridges and we were right here in town, we got there first:

Daddy is fielding questions about the animals on the African Savannah

After the fact, someone pointed out to me that Caroline appears to have a little suitor in the above picture.  How could I have missed that? :)

Caroline wanted her picture with a giraffe in the background

The boys were checking out the Greater Kudu - they showed absolutely NO interest in the Lesser Kudu - snobs!

Daddy is as tall as a gorilla!

In front of an empty portion of the gorilla habitat

The gorilla did show up, though, and he stuck his tongue out at us

And then he walked away

But we caught up with him with all his gorilla buddies.

Sam met us at the gorillas, all hot and sweaty from a stressful drive (3 accidents on Highway 92!)  Junior was wide awake and ready for some animals!

As we strolled through more gorillas, we got a text from Chelsea that they'd just arrived, so we headed back to the entrance to meet up with her and then we all wandered our way over to the cat house to see the new tiger.

Our parade became sort of an exhibit of its own, though in the crowd of strollers we didn't get as many "ooh, triplets" comments as we had when we were on our own (my favorite had been the folks who exited a tunnel behind us and said, "Crap, that was a lot of babies" - I almost expected it to be the same teen who had commented, "Dang! Hecka babies." five months ago!)

Look at all those strollers! And you can't even see Caroline's in this picture!

The closest animal encounter we had was with the hippo:

Hartley got an up-close view of the hippo

But she didn't seem THAT impressed

Sam and Junior were checking to make sure Joe and the boys were seeing everything

Max had a question

Daniel didn't have the answer

And we forced poor Sam to squat and take a picture with antlers

After the hippo, we wandered around a bit.  We went all the way up to Grizzly Gulch, but didn't see the bears up close.  Two young bears did come right up to the window, but there was a clutch of people gawking and no way of pushing the strollers in close (and besides, the babies wouldn't have noticed, most likely).  The most exciting part of the bear visit was when a young boy, about five, streaked past us yelling, "MOM! THE BEAR PEE-PEED RIGHT IN FRONT OF US! MOM! MOM!" and his poor, embarrassed mother, whom he'd passed as he was running, got nearly toppled by her second son who was equally excited by bear pee-pee.  We were sad they weren't with us later when we saw the wallaroo taking a poop.

The one really wrong turn we took was going into the tarantula exhibit.  It was a warm day and we'd been walking around for about an hour and a half.  The exhibit is indoors and is humid, as there are many tropical insects and birds housed in there.  Ugh.  It did serve to make the outside temperature feel cool, though.

My grandmother, Caroline's namesake, had a famous fear of arachnids, stemming, apparently, from the time someone put a large tarantula on her hand and THEN told her it was poisonous.  As I posed Caroline in front of the hairy beast, I noticed she did not seem terribly comfortable (nor terribly concerned, I must admit):

The boys mostly look like they'd like to get out of the heat

 At the end of the exhibit, there was a painting where kids could stick their heads in to the body of a spider.  I teased Sam that she wasn't short enough for this one, and she proved me wrong by taking Junior in to pose:

He looked so cute, I thought we should get a picture of Max and Daniel.  We went through the troubly of unbuckling them and carrying their hot little bodies over to the picture only to discover you had to crawl INSIDE a sort of hard-sided cave thing that was obviously constructed for children.  On my knees, I almost bumped my head on top.  And you can see how excited the boys were to take their picture:

We will file this photo away under "things we don't need to do again for a very long time!

All in all it was a very successful day at the zoo.  The babies got home a little past their dinner time, but they ate everything up and seemed quite happy about it.  And then the excitement and heat of the day finally took its toll - an hour of screamy Caroline and screechy Max before bedtime.  Daniel, on the contrary, was happy as a clam stealing everyone's toys and laughing at their melt-downs.  Now that I think of it, he was the one stripped down to nothing but a diaper, while they were still wearing their onesies.  Hmmmm....I wonder!