Zoo - Again!

 Saturday, December 11th was BEAUTIFUL.  So we decided to take the girls to the zoo the next day.  Unfortunately, we told the girls before we checked the weather.  The temp dropped 20 degrees that night!  The girls said they still wanted to go and were VERY excited about it so we bundled everyone up and headed out.  Oh well, at least we got to play with the new camera again!

It was Member Morning in the Reptile House, so we headed there first.  We got to watch the Cuban Crocodile feeding, a snake feeding, and just chat with a lot of the reptile house staff.  Brandon was VERY excited.  Allison was kind of interested.  Jordan was bored and tired and irritated after 10 minutes.

Look, it's Pascal!  (Rapunzel's sidekick from 'Tangled')

"I'm all done, Mommy!"  Oh, and this was the day of her crazy hair, in case you couldn't tell.

Jordan was still crabby when we went by this the first time and Allison posed.  After a carousel ride, she was in a much better mood!

We have a new exhibit at the zoo that is Africa and it houses the giraffes, rhinos (new!), and chimpanzees (new!).  They are planning on moving the elephants over there too, I think.

This chimp was so cute!  Apparently, she always has a blanket with her.  Her name is Sally, and she's 24.

The telescopes at the chimp exhibit are free!  And they have one close to the ground for the kids.

The rhinos were headbutting each other when we were there.

I guess I didn't take any pictures of the giraffes new home but it was very cool too.  They have a feeding station where you can pay to feed the giraffes and you walk up a ramp and are right at their head level.  VERY cool (although not as cool as I remember the feeding at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs being).

We played on the playground.

Allison got hot at the playground and took off her jacket (even though it was 55 degrees out).  She refused to put it back on.

I was testing out the "aquarium" setting on the new camera.

They LOVE this tunnel through the piranhas!

Jordan was a little tired at this point.  The bad thing was that there was a line of kids behind her waiting to crawl through!

So I went to the other end and coaxed her out.

It actually turned out to be a great visit.  Instead of eating at the zoo like we normally do, we ate our picnic lunch in the van.  It was too cold!!