trip to the zoo

We took the kids to the Hogle Zoo to celebrate Alex's 3rd birthday as a family.

Michael was fascinated with this thing that I was wearing on my head. Playing with my visor kept his mind off of the hat on his head that he didn't want to wear.

Alex loves giraffes and it was really fun for him to see the baby giraffe. It's story is a cool one. The only male giraffe died a couple years ago and it was sad, but after he died, the zoo found out that one of the 3 females was pregnant. They didn't even know it was possible for him to father a child, but he did. They also had a baby elephant at the zoo. She was so cute, we saw her breastfeeding and then she stood off to the side and fell asleep.

It was a hot day and we stopped for snow cones. Can you tell that Alex loved his grape flavored one?

Of course, when we got on to the carousel, Alex had to find a giraffe. He didn't even care that this one didn't move up and down. Liz was on a bengal tiger because the zebra was already occupied. Johnny found a praying mantis to ride and I put Mike on a black bear next to John so that he wasn't alone.

In the Asian Highlands they have these cute tiger statues and my kids had to climb on them. It's fun to see them all having fun together. Johnny is growling. We also saw the ears of the baby tigers while they slept. As we left, we passed a big horn sheep that was willing to take pictures with my kids. Then my kids started acting up and I started yelling and the sheep walked away. He was telling me that it had been a long day and it was time to go home.