Daddy's Birthday at the Zoo

This year, Daddy's birthday fell on the Friday of a 4-day weekend, so we all celebrated by heading out to the zoo together.  The kids have seen a lot of zoo animals on tv and in their books, so it was definitely time to go back.  And since many of the school districts didn't have this Friday off, we had a relatively empty zoo to enjoy.  We brought the wagon, which was much more convenient than the strollers, but led to just as much "up, up, up" requesting/whining from the kids.  I wasn't confident letting them out until we got to the top of the zoo, so they had to suck it up for a while.

Our first stop was the African Savannah.  At the first view spot, there was a giraffe right up at the edge eating leaves right in front of us, which was very exciting.  The kids also noticed the zebras lazing beyond them.  We followed the path on through a couple of tunnels where the kids learned the joys of echo and found ourselves at the gorilla enclosure.  The views aren't great from the wagon, but all three did notice that the gorillas were there and that they were thumping their chests.  Going up one of the winding ramps for an aerial view, I banged both Max's and Caroline's heads into the railing, so I'll have to practice being more careful with the wagon.

From Africa, we went to see the monkeys and the kids did their best impressions of monkey noises, and then off to the penguins.  The big cats were all sleeping, but the hippo was right up at the edge of her enclosure with her big, hairy nose sticking out of the water, snuffling.

From there we made our way up to the bears.  Caroline was really looking forward to seeing the bears, so we were very pleased to see the two Kodiaks walking back and forth from one door to another.

At one point they bumped into each other and growled, which scared and excited the kids.  But even with bears on the move, snacks were the big attraction for Daniel.

They were so excited to get out of the wagon that they started running off in all directions.

Caroline decided she wanted to be very helpful, so she pulled the wagon for us (as long as nobody was riding in it).  At one point, Max got way ahead of us and I worried that he was running toward the Little Puffer Railroad crossing.  I called ahead to him to come back, and Caroline took off running.  I was terrified that they were both going to run onto the tracks, but when she caught up with Max, she grabbed his hand and said, "Max, let's go back to Mommy!"

(notice Daniel grabbing for the snacks)

Checking out a polar bear

Daniel abandons the polar bear and goes in search of snacks

Everyone decided to hold hands when we got to the shadowy area beyond the insect zoo and I was herding them toward the Australian Outback enclosure, but all of the kangaroos were still asleep.  I tried to get a picture of everyone calling to the kangaroos, but unfortunately, this is when Max noticed my phone and started melting down, begging to be allowed to play "Lazy Town" and I had to put it away and pick him up.

While I calmed Max down, Caroline helped Daddy by taking charge of the wagon again.

And then we went to see the koalas, who were all sleeping (Caroline reminds you to shush!)  After that, we thought we'd take them to the petting zoo, but they became entranced by the trees at the entrance to the children's zoo (and trying to pull the leaves off to decorate a rock on the other side of the path), so we stayed there until Caroline proclaimed it was time to go home.

And that was our day at the zoo - just one melt down and nobody got lost - overall, a positive outing!