There is this book that Sierra loves called "Peek a Who." As you turn each page, there is a little cut out of what you will see when you turn the next page. Peek a ... (see a little picture of train track through the cut out) ... Choo Choo; Peek a ... (see black and white spots) ... MOO; Peek a ... (picture of eyes and bats) ... BOO (it's a ghost); Peek a ... (mirror on the last page) ... YOU! Anyway, one of them is a zoo, which is where we went last Saturday with my mom.
Jason was away at Outward Bound with the sophomore class, so Mom and I took a day trip to the National Zoo. We first headed to my cousin's house to meet up with my cousin Jamie, his wife Mandy, and their boys, Colin (4) and Jake (5.5). I was really looking forward to visiting them because I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had seen Jamie, and I had never even met his wife or kiddos. We figured out that the last time we had seen each other was probably at our granddad's funeral, which was when I was a freshman in high school. So I've never even known Jamie as an adult. Crazy!!
Anyway, the 7 of us headed out to lunch at the Cactus Cantina, which was really great. The food was yummy (especially the salsa ... MMMMM!) and the place was super kid-friendly.
Then it was off to the zoo! The National Zoo is a nice place, though, I'm interested to see how much better it will be next year or the year after. There is a lot of construction going on right now. It was pretty crowded (not surprising, since it was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon). What was surprising was that I saw several runners trying to run through the crowd. I would think that you would avoid the zoo paths if you were doing your run at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon, but, whatever.
Jake and Colin have been to the zoo many times before and they were so excited to get to the Praire Dog playground. Right next to the prairie dog exhibit, the Prairie Dog Playground is a small series of tunnels that you can crawl around in and you can pop up and peek out the top like a prairie dog. Fun!
Sierra's favorite part was the tiger. She's a fan of tigers. Probably because she's around a lot of tigers. But no real tigers until now. Woodberry's mascot is the tiger, and when you live at a school whose mascot is the tiger, tigers cannot be avoided. The first animal sound Sierra made was a tiger growl. And you should have heard growling while we looked at the tiger. Over and over and over again. "Grr! Grr! Grrrrrr! Gr!" It was really cute. "Grrrr!" And this tiger was awesome. He was the real-life version of Alex the Lion in "Madagascar." Totally putting on a show. He walked all along the perimeter in front of the people watching, then he walked all along in front of the people back to where he started. He streched and walked into his tiger cave and came back out, jumped up to the next level of his enclosure and did another loop around the perimeter.
I loved the tropical room with the huge fish and the cool tropical plants, I recognized a cacao tree from my days teaching biology at UConn and was really excited to identify the cacao pods. "Look! It's a chocolate tree!"
A few more photos of zoo fun:
The zoo is exhausting!
Really exhausting!
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