School Holiday = Zoo Day!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Savannah had a school holiday scheduled.  I'm not sure what exactly the holiday was for... but whatever, I'll take it.  As soon as I learned about the day off I immediately knew what we were going to do.  I had been trying for several weeks to find a time to take Ryder to the zoo.  Every time that I made plans to do that something came up or someone was sick, so needless to say, it never happened.  So now instead of just getting to take Ryder to the zoo, I was also going to get to bring sister!!  Love going places with my babies... these kids are seriously so much fun.  The three of us had a great time at the zoo.  I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that this was one of the best zoo day I have ever had.  The animals were so social and playful... I'm not sure I have ever seen so many animals so eager to be seen and interact with people.  The monkeys were out acting crazy and even better than that the gorillas were out.  There was one that sat right in front of the kids at one of those huge windows and just played peek-a-boo with them.  It was amazing.  Savannah was totally in awe of how human like the gorilla was.  The absolute best part of the day was the beautiful white tiger that paced back and forth in front of a huge window right in front of us.  Since we were in no rush and it wasn't very crowded when we were there, the three of us sat and watched the tiger for almost an hour.  We just couldn't walk away from him.  I could go on and on about all the cool animals we saw... if only every trip to the zoo was like this.

Savannah is always so eager to learn something new.  She made us stop at every single one of the informational signs at the zoo to listen to the recording.  Then she made me read the sign to her.

Here he is... the beautiful tiger that entertained the kids for a very long time.  Ryder was right up at the glass until the tiger got right in front of him and put his paw on the glass.  That freaked him out a bit... he didn't get quite as close after that.

Thanks to Pinterest, I found a link to a free printable zoo passport.  So I printed out the pages and stapled them together for miss Savannah.  She loved it.  Each page had a different animal on it and once we saw that animal we would stop and sit and she would color it.  There was also a page in the back for her to write about things that she observed.  Girl loves to write sentences, so she quickly filled up that page with animal info she had learned.

While Daddy's Is Away

When we go on the road with E, I have to be prepared to keep the kids busy outside of a hotel room all day until we need to go pick up daddy.  We had one full day to go play in San Antonio while E was away working.  Since we hit two of the main attractions in the evening with E, I decided to go basic and head to the local zoo.  I don't know why, but the zoo is always a huge hit with the kids.  They both ran around that place like crazy animals... climbing on every animal statue they came across, jumping off every rock they could, touching every animal they could... keeping up with the two of them was quite the task.  Thankfully, both of them tend to be pretty good listeners and stay close while we are exploring places.  

Oh the Emu... Ryder's only fit of the day... he did NOT want to leave that "big bird".  

The coolest part of the zoo was the bird feeding area.  Both kids had a blast getting to hold and feed the birds.  Savannah started off a little scared and then eventually was brave enough to have the bird sit on her hand while it ate.  Ryder did not want the birds to land on him at all... he did want to hold the food and pet the bird, though.  Savannah's favorite part was when a pesky little bird landed on my head and scared me to death.  It wouldn't leave my head.  She was laughing so hard that she was crying and I thought there was a chance that she was going to pee her pants.

After we were done at the zoo we walked over to the neighboring park and rode the kiddie train around.  Again, something else that is always a huge hit with the kids.  Ryder would not stop saying "choo choo".