We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Am I the only one who regularly gets Raffi songs stuck in their head?  Yes?  Ok, then. Nevermind.

Moving on.  We went to the zoo last weekend!  We had been wanting to visit Ken's dad, so back around the first week of August we made arrangements to take a trip.  Ken had last week off for the fair, including the weekend after, so that just seemed like the perfect time.

We arrived at Papa's house late Friday evening after a work picnic.  The kids were in their jammies, mostly ready to go to bed.  Benjamin had a hard time settling, but finally managed to sleep. We woke up Saturday morning, got ourselves all ready and headed out to the zoo.  Ken's brother, sister in law and niece came with us too, so we took two cars.

We spent the first part of the day going through the buildings since those tend to close earlier than the rest of the zoo.  The weather was actually perfect for this trip.  It was sunny and warm, but not hot and very few bugs.  It was crowded, but not too bad, and not more than you would expect for a Saturday in August.

I didn't actually take all that many pictures, because we were just having fun.  I did snap a few when the kids lingered in certain places longer than usual.  They kept hoping this elephant would go in the water, but she never did. 

 Henry couldn't get over how long the necks are on the, appropriately named, long-necked turtles. 

 We did get to see the tiger out and about.  When we got to the enclosure, he was sleeping.  Then he woke up, came down from the higher level and walked the perimeter of the wall a few times back and forth.  We ended up watching him for quite a while.

 And of course, Benjamin wanted Baby Tiger to meet the big tiger, so this is them getting acquainted.

 As is usually the case, we left much later than we had anticipated and the kids were starting to get cranky.  I pushed for a picture of the kids in the ZOO sign because I have one from when Henry was tiny and I wanted to compare the two.  Of course, that picture is digitally stored somewhere I cannot find it.  Oh well.  The picture below fits into my other series of photos entitled "My Kid Hates Fun."  In reality, he was mad because I wouldn't help him climb on top of the letters.