Zoo day

You guys, we are on day three of Croup-vasion. No leaving the house (except the urgent care visit Monday to see if maybe we could get some medicine to help Vivian continue breathing through the night since she struggled to do so during her nap that day), no adult interaction, watching my sanity slip through my drafty, drafty house.

Did I mention my house is cold?  Yes, I know, I live in Texas, how cold could it possibly be?  Cold!  Like in the 40s-50s during the day and 30s-40s at night!  My house is like an igloo!!!

I can hear you people in Illinois and farther up north laughing at me, but I can not help it, I have been Texas-ified.  I no longer can handle cold and it is embarrassing, but true.  When we travel up to Illinois next month, I'm pretty sure we're all going to lose fingers and toes to frostbite.

So, November was jam packed with activities and visitors.  If I had my act together, I would have given you a play-by-play quickly after it all happened, but I do not have my act together.  I often think about blogging, toy with ideas I want to chat your ears off about, and then get lost in a world of Peppa Pig, homeschooling, cooking meals for the people I am legally obligated to feed, and reading too much fb.

This month we ventured to the zoo.  I know you know my love of zoos is immense, and i am happy to say that I am properly schooling my children to love them as much as me.

I forgot the name of this guy, but he was uber cute and I wanted to pet him until Elisabeth read he was poisonous, so I just decided to take his picture instead. 

 Evan hates snakes, which I find so odd because I find them fascinating.

 How cute are these two?

 Julia is really taking off with her reading.  She read a lot of the captions about the animals and is trying to sound out long words. The other day she was reading what I was typing in a text and then I realized that maybe I should not write swear words down in her presence anymore...or put text standing up where she can't see what I'm typing.

 There was a brand new baby monkey!!!

 I kid you not, this tiny tree kangaroo was playing his tail like an air guitar right before I took this picture.  I was belly laughing and probably cause some people to wonder about my sanity, but come on--a kangaroo using his tail as a guitar?  Hilarious!

 In between these steps is water with no kind of net or anything:

 Vivian wanted to walk with the big girls on it and I called out, "OMG! How deep is that if she falls in???" Evan looked at me and said, "Maybe 2 inches." Oh.  I guess there is no need to fear the zoo would allow an area where people could fall in and drown.  Pretty sure Evan contemplated my intelligence and whether to continue our marriage after I yelled that out so loudly.

Well, my sick children are whining at me to pay attention to them and attend their needs. Guess I best go and parent them for a while. Thank the Lord that Evan comes home early today because I am scidaddiling out of here to do some last minute pre-Thanksgiving grocery shopping and time away from prison..er...home.

Celebrating 30 at the zoo.

This past Friday, I turned 30.

As is my birthday tradition, Evan made me a pumpkin pie instead of a birthday cake. I like pie.

I had lots of people ask me how I felt about turning 30. Exactly the same way I feel every birthday--excited it's the day of my birth!!!! Can you believe some people don't care when it's their birthday? I think that's insane. I love my birthday. And, I've never been all worked up about turning 30. Maybe I'll feel different about different birthday milestones, but the idea of turning 3o just didn't freak me out.

For this birthday, I couldn't think of anything I really needed or wanted. And, since last year at Christmas I told our friends and family that I'd rather have them gift the girls chances and opportunities to make memories and experience things, I decided to take my own advice and told Evan that all I wanted for my birthday was to go to the San Antonio Zoo. So, Saturday we went and Evan bought us a membership! Best birthday gift EVER!!!!!
The high on Saturday was 95 degrees (stupid Texas heat), so we got there in the morning when it was still nice and balmy. There are lots of flowers at the San Antonio zoo. I may have taken a ton of pictures of them. I'll just share a couple with you today.
We really enjoyed the zoo. It is HUGE and a small aquarium in it that Julia loved. She even wore her fish dress to show the fish at the zoo. There was this weird, ugly, tired turtle that I kind of couldn't stop staring at:
And there was this spotted sting ray that looked like a cow that I loved:


More flowers...
The girls liked it. There was so much to do that there was no way we could do it all in one day. I kept telling them we'd be back a million times and we'd totally do it all.
Have you ever seen an alligator like this before? Or is it a crocodile? Crap, I can't remember.

By 1:30, we were done. It's was creeping up into the 90s and Julia gets just as cranky as I do when she's hot and sweaty. We made one last trip to see the elephants and got to watch them being fed...and happened to stumble upon the hippos who were comically cuddling underwater.


I told the girls that this zoo will rock during cooler weather because we'll get to see the animals move around more. Plus, it never gets too cold, so it's a zoo we can visit all year long!!! It was a great birthday weekend.

A Zoo Overnight

This past Friday night, Elisabeth and I went to an overnight at Cheyenne Mtn Zoo with her Girl Scout troop. Now, you all know how much I love zoos, so when they said that parents were welcome to attend if they paid for themselves, I immediately said YES!

We arrived at the zoo at 5:45. The gates closed at 6:00PM and would not be re-opening until the next morning. We stayed at this cabin:

I didn't even realize the zoo had cabins! This cabin is hidden behind the sky line entrance, so I've walked by it a dozen times and never really seen it. The zoo has overnights for anyone who is willing to pay. You could have a family reunion there and rent out the cabins if you so wished. They provide dinner and breakfast the next day!
I brought sleeping bags, but the other moms were all way smarter and brought blow up beds. I was pretty irritated that I hadn't thought of that myself (a mistake I shan't make again!). I'm too spoiled to sleep on the floor, I tells you.

After a dinner of pizza, the girls were ready for their night time tour.
We started with the hippos. We got to watch the hippo keeper feed the hippos their last meal of the day--about 20lbs of grass/hay.
I've never seen a hippo move so fast. As soon as they saw their keeper, those two giantesses booked it out of the water and straight to the grub! Watching them eat was both mesmerizing and kind of icky. Ever played Hungry, Hungry Hippos? Yeah, that's exactly how they eat! Just with grass drool. We hung out there for a while, asking questions, visiting the other animals also in that building and watching the hippos play with a giant green ball in the water after they had eaten every last piece of grass/hay.

The evening views from the zoo were breathtaking. Look, it's downtown Colorado Springs:
Here's the view from the Primate House:
We kind of hurried through the Primate House because the orangutans and the gorillas are used to having their lights out at 7:30 and most of them were all snuggled down for the night when we showed up. Here's an interesting tidbit--babies and mommy primates cuddle together at night until the babies are about 4 or 5 years old. We watched the mommy gorilla cuddle her 2 year old baby; lovingly petting his head and kissing his ears. It was sweet and the girls made lots of comments about how their mommies used to cuddle them like that.

We also went to the Giraffe House to say goodnight to them. This giraffe was so excited to have Ebeth feed him crackers, that after I took this picture, he promptly sneezed on her. She was completely grossed out.

The giraffes are one of the best things about this zoo. They love to be fed their crackers and are very gentle.

Our last stop of the night tour was to The Loft. The Loft hold things like snakes, spiders, mice, parrots, turtles, bats and this de-scented skunk. (Turns out some college kids thought having a skunk as a pet would be a great idea. They had the stink glands taken out, but quickly learned that wild animals do not care about carpet or furniture. They donated Lily the Skunk to the zoo where she happily lives in a blanketed hollow log in The Loft and is sweet and friendly even at 9:30PM on a Friday night.)
We headed back to our cabin around 10:00PM. The girls had a snack, got in their jammers and played card games till 11. Our tour guide was going to be back at 6:00AM for a very early morning tour before our time at the zoo was done.
After drinking about 4 cups of coffee and eating a bagel, I was human enough to start the morning tour with everyone else.

We visited all the big cats, but made a stop at one of my favorite animals at the zoo--the Pallas Cats. These guys are the oldest type of cats (pre-tigers, lions and leopards) and originate in Asia. These guys are NEVER out when we visit the zoo, but because there were no crowds and it was super early in the morning, they made an appearance. I was quite excited.
Elisabeth was thrilled when the bears woke up and came by to start fishing for their breakfast.
The whole thing was an amazing experience. I know I'm a bit biased with my extreme love of zoos and all, but getting a private tour was so interesting. After our tour guide said good-bye, we were free to roam the zoo for the rest of the day if we liked. We stuck around for a little bit, but by 9:30, both Elisabeth and I were starving and I was going to need another round of caffeine if I was expected to drive home.

When I asked Elisabeth what her favorite part of the overnight had been, she said eating lunch with her friends and playing on a giant rock by our cabin.