It's all happening at the zoo!

As a thank you gift for babysitting their daughter during the school year, our friends (and Vicki's former/Lexi's new teacher) gave us a membership to the zoo! I had mentioned at some point that we were planning on getting one, and so they hurried out and did it for us before we had the chance. I feel slightly guilty accepting it, because honestly all I did a couple of days a week was feed Violet breakfast and then put her down for an amazing 4 hour nap before giving her lunch and hauling her to the school to pick up the big girls. By the time we got home it was usually only a half hour, at the most, before her mom came to pick her up. So I feel like I didn't really do all that much, but they ignored my protests and insisted we enjoy the gift. Thank you Brian, Christa, and Violet!!!

So yesterday the girls and I rode MAX to the zoo (it goes right to the entrance - love it!) and activated our membership. We love riding the train. Ellie loves to sit in the "grown up girl" seats with Lexi, but Vicki prefers to stand for the whole ride.


We measured our wingspans and discovered that we come closest to the peregrine falcon. Ellie was not just measuring, but flapping her wings.
In keeping with the bird theme, we watched the bird show for the first time ever while we ate lunch. It was pretty cool, although two of the birds seemed to decide that they had their own agenda for the show. The turkey falcon thought he would walk among the crowd for a while, hoping for snacks no doubt, before the trainers convinced him to fly up to his perch. During his little jaunt, the trainer on the stage kept saying things like, "Folks, if the bird comes near you please keep your children away and make no sudden moves" while Darth Vader's theme played in the background.

The bald eagle, who apparently has some vision issues, also wasn't cooperating as normal and took a while to make up his mind to fly to the stage. I got this awesome shot of him after the show. I kept expecting him to turn to the crown milling around the base of the stage and announce, "You are all weirdos!"

After the bird show we decided to see some of the animals. Ellie was the only one who had any clear desire to see any particular animals, so we just followed her lead. She was really excited to see the "hippobapotomus", so that's where we went first. And we saw not only one, but two hippobapotomuses (hippobapotomusi?), although one of them was really more of a hippo-bottomus. Then we moved along to the "effalunts".

After the effalunts we went to the petting zoo where all three girls petted the goats. Unfortunately, I was stuck holding the sno cones, so I didn't get any pictures. There's a tractor by the petting zoo that the kids love to play on, and there happens to be three seats in front of it, so I couldn't resist a sister shot. See the front of Ellie's shirt? It was totally blue before the sno cones.
Mmmmmm...artificial flavor and color that will never, ever come out!
This is my favorite shot of the day. Lexi's sno cone was blue.