The Big Zoo

Still catching up from October.  I swear, it's been since the girls were just babies that blogging has been so hard for me to keep up with.  I can't really explain it.  Since I got a new laptop back in August, I've been trying to be much better about deleting photos, and they are SO many of them.  I've also been trying to catch up with Project Life, and adding more digital elements really speeds up the assembly time, but it means investing more time upfront on the computer... and then I don't feel like going through more photos for a blog post.

So, back in October, we went to Columbia for a family weekend/Greg's birthday weekend.  We actually had a conference with the girls' teacher on Friday afternoon, so we left after that.  On Saturday morning, we went to the "big" zoo.

The first place they wanted to go was to see the penguins.  They love the penguins!  We came back later in the afternoon for the penguin feeding.

We ended up getting a membership at this zoo, too, because they have a bunch of rides that get expensive for three kids.  So they rode this train, over and over.

The membership also got us "free" lettuce to feed to the giraffes.  It was pretty cool.  Because it was so long ago, I can't remember who actually fed the giraffes - I think it was Emma and Julie.  

We also got to go on the pony rides.  Well, Becca did.  Emma and Julie are still scared.  I had to include this first one, because Becca is a total nail biter.  She's done it forever, and I can't get her to stop.  I honestly don't think we've cut her nails since she was an infant.

There was a big fight over who got to sit on the front of the elephant, so after Becca and Emma got off, I let Julie get on by herself for a few minutes.

Between the cow at the dairy farm a few weeks before this trip, and this cow, Emma now calls this "watering the cow."

A few spins on the merry-go-round.

And then we had to play at the playground.  Apparently we cannot pass a playground without stopping.

Julie loves these "telephone" things.  She's practically hanging from this one.  And she'd make me stand over at the other end.  There's one at a playground closer to home that my girls like to monopolize as well.

And then some climbing on the lion statues.

  Emma looks so old here.

There's also a botanical garden attached to the zoo.  In the past, we've only ever taken the free tram ("train") up there, and then turned right around and came back.  But we walked through it quickly this time.  There was some big cheerleading competition going on that weekend, and the girls were fascinated.

4th of July

We didn't really have anything planned for the 4th of July.  We woke up and had one of those, "I don't know, what do you want to do?" mornings.  We decided to use some Living Social vouchers I'd bought for a water park that's in the next town over.

 They still don't like even the little kid water slides.  They mostly like to lay on their bellies in the shallow pool and pretend to swim (read: scrape their bathing suits along the bottom of the pool until they pill...).  They like to sit on the edge of the pool (like the pic of Em, just above, at "0 Ft 0 In") and jump in, and climb back out again.  Julie has recently started to like laying on her back and floating.  She's also been swimming in the tub lately - Emma and Becca are usually in a hurry to get out of the tub when I do baths, so I always save Julie for last.  She loves having the whole tub to herself, and I let her "swim" while I start cleaning up.

The girls had been begging to go see fireworks all week.  We used it as a bargaining chip for most of the week.  On the 4th, we told them that they all had to take a nap, or we wouldn't go see fireworks.  I guess the water park wore them out sufficiently, because they all did take a nap.  At that point, Greg and I figured we'd have to come up with a plan for fireworks after all.  Naps are so hard to come by these days that we were counting on staying home.

We had about 3 options, and considering traffic, cost, and crowds, we decided to go a few towns over. They were having a carnival in addition to fireworks, so after dinner, we headed over.  There were only a couple of rides that they were big enough for.  Here, they're contemplating the ferris wheel.

They went on this thing first.  It was definitely small town carnival, complete with a spare bolt laying on the platform.

They all wanted to go on the little ferris wheel, too.  While we were waiting in line, I overheard a boy tell his mother that it looked like a dog cage.  Yeah, pretty much.

They really wanted to go on the bigger ferris wheel with us, but the line was ridiculous, and it was going to cost us $20 to all go.  Instead, we spent that $20 on some Italian ices.

Love this one.

At that point, we were just stalling until the fireworks.  There was a concert going on, so we checked that out for a bit.  Finally, we decided to get some drinks and kettle corn, and go get the chairs from the car to settle in for some fireworks.

We settled in.  Found a spot.  Cracked open the kettle corn.

One firework went up.  It was pretty.

And then, it went BOOM.

And they freaked.

"Iwannagetinthecar.  I'mscared.  Daddy!  Idon'twannaseefireworks!  Iwannagohome!"

They were yelling and crying, so much that the people in front of us got up and moved.

We packed up.  Watched fireworks from 3 or 4 different displays from the car on the way home.

I can't say I was terribly disappointed.  I'm not crazy about fireworks myself.  But after how much they wanted to go, I felt bad for them.

Maybe next year.

Catching up, part 1

Last weekend, we went to the zoo in Atlanta, which insists on calling itself Zoo Atlanta, not the Atlanta Zoo.  I let that slide and bought the Groupon a few months ago.  Plus, the girls were free until they turn 3.  And if you've read my recent "Acts of Animal Terrorism" posts, you're probably wondering why we went to the zoo again.  Groupon.  And we needed something different to do.  Oh, and Archiver's was on the way home.

The girls totally shocked me, though, and loved the zoo!  They weren't afraid to look at anything, really, though Julie and Emma wouldn't go near the gorilla statue.

They all had to give the giraffe statue a hug, though.

What's it going to take to get a picture for the Christmas card????

We spent a lot of time watching the monkeys - they all wanted to watch the baby monkeys on the "grandma" and "daddy" monkeys.  It was awfully cute, although I 'm not sure why they were assuming that the ones carrying the babies weren't the mommy monkeys?

They had some monkey statues which were equally as attractive as the monkeys themselves, apparently.  Becca tried to sit in the mommy monkey's lap.

It took them a long time to realize that the mommy monkey also had a baby, and then they kept wanting to pat the baby.

There was also a treehouse exhibit, and they ran right over to this giant nest and had to play in it.

There were two observation points for the bears - the first one that you come to gives you a view from the top, but we couldn't really see much from there.  We had to walk a bit out of the way before we came down to the ground-level observation point, and the whole time Emma kept talking about having to see "her bears."

E, finally getting to see "her" bears

Right next to the bears were some tigers.  Well, a "mommy" tiger and two tiger cubs.  The girls asked where the daddy tiger was.  I told them he was at work.  They've been asking that a lot lately, with stories that we read.  Now they say, "Daddy at work?"

I didn't think I'd ever see my kids that close to a tiger exhibit.  Now, they did start backing up when the tiger started walking toward the glass...  But the two cubs (way over to the left, kind of in the glare) were a big enough draw, I guess.

One of the draws of this particular zoo is the new panda exhibit.  Of course, two were sleeping, and they were cleaning the cages of the other two while we were there.  But the girls still loved to see the sleeping one.  Which led to the panda souvenir store.  Which was supposed to just result in some panda bear socks (because they were so excited about the monkey socks I had on that day), but instead resulted in panda sock and another $45 worth of stuffed panda bears.

The other draw of this zoo?  The rides.  A merry-go-round, and a train.  I thought they were going to freak out when they saw it.  We were at the start of the line, and I saw a line of three panda bears all together.  Somehow I thought we'd get away with all riding together.  But Emma?  Did not want a panda bear.  She wanted "her bear,"  So she and I scrambled to find a non-panda bear.  And?  She loved every last minute of it.

Greg rode with Becca and Julie, who loved their panda bears.  He said Julie squealed every time it went up and down for the first minute or so.  I just got a chance to grab a quick picture before we got off.  You know, since Emma's bear was of course half way around the merry-go-round from the row of pandas.

We also rode the train.  I'll admit, I was afraid they were going to freak.  Because I had no idea there were two dark tunnels on this train ride.  I saw Becca's eyes get bigger than I've ever seen them... but other than that, they loved it!

We just had a great day.  A great family fun day.  The weather was perfect and a little cool, but so nice to be outside all day.  We ended up parking in a residential area, and when we got back to the car, the girls wanted to walk up and down the sidewalk to shuffle in the leaves.

:)  A really good day.