Talking the A-Team to the Zoo

Last Saturday, we decided to take the A-Team to the zoo. We had talked about it on and off, but we decided to just go. We took Todd's niece Holly, who is older than me :) so we call her "Aunt Holly" as she loves to spend time with our kids, often saying "I'm not having any of my own so yours are mine!".

It turned out to be a beautiful day, but getting ready to go we realized that as great as my Mazda 5 is for toting the two kids around, probably not quite roomy enough for good travel...Holly did fit in the third seat with two strollers, but nothing else was going to and the only way she could get out is if we took Abbey's carseat out first!

We stopped at the Denny's next to the zoo first (we've been hitting them up since Butler's started picking up the trash :) and got to the zoo about noon. Low and behold, we were not the only ones who had the grand idea of heading to the zoo in sunny and low 70's weather! We nabbed a parking spot after a little roaming and headed in...Abbey did fall asleep and Todd leashed Adam to him. Holly was pushing an empty stroller for a bit :)

It was busy and a little crowded, but we just headed for it. First off, Adam loved the NEMO fish at the beginning...as Finding Nemo is a movie he does like. After that, he loved animals that were the size of dogs...calling them dee-dees :) In this first picture, he's looking at lions which he seemed a little wary of. Definitely bigger than Bailey!! He had fun walking through all the indoor areas with his Daddy...going right up to the glass and looking. True to his nature, he was so curious. He wrinkles his brow and gets this great look on his face that shows how hard he is really taking in and processing what he sees. Todd wrinkles his brow too when he's reading something and thinking about something...so cute he looks like a minature version of his Daddy! It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to see them together to be honest :)

Once outside, it was pretty warm...we had to take off his top shirt. Then we hiked up the trail part, which was, of course, less interesting to Adam because the animals were far off and often hard to see. It seemed to be siesta time, after all. And being in his stroller now made it hard to see. But near the end I took him out to see a few large animals and a couple times he said "hi!" in his cute little high voice reserved for his and byes :) Pretty cute. He did get pretty hot and tired, as you can see. And Abbey woke up just as we started the trail part, crying until we got on the uneven wood planks...they calmed her down and made her happy. But you can see in this pic she wasn't particularly thrilled with us!!!

We all had fun and Adam was so tired he WANTed to sit in his stroller near the end, something he had resisted by bucking himself forward whenever we stopped. He didn't fall asleep on the way home however, he was just too excited. He did take a nap when we got home!

I really love doing stuff together like that...there wasn't much chance for this stuff when I was kid. I always wanted to take my kids to see as much as possible...to help them to live life and expose them to so many things so they can find and explore their own interests.