Birthday Zoo Trip

Last weekend we took a trip to the National Zoo for my birthday. My dad and sister came to meet us. My mother's back is still injured, so she and my other sister remained at home.

From 8-16-09 Zoo Birthday

This is a terrible picture, I know, but I wanted to snap it before there was bloodshed over this germy statue. The trip was great fun, but it. was. hot. And I was reminded that one of our rules is never to go to the zoo in August for this reason. I also remembered that the zoo is really fun with older kids who can wait their turns, ask questions, and soak it all in. Smaller ones get overstimulated (as was the case with Rachel).





A lot of our pictures look like this - us standing, pathetically grateful, in the misters positioned throughout the zoo.





We also stopped at every concession stand we could and ate cold things. That helped and thank goodness Grandpa footed the bill. Water for all of us cost $16.

Here my sweet sister Chrissy, who came along, sat with the kids.



We saw parts of the zoo that I don't remember seeing before, like the aquarium exhibit (mainly because we headed inside whenever possible):



In terror of the giant insect-



One of the most amazing things was being able to see all 3 elephants up close for as long as we wanted to. They were inside and eating bamboo. One would industrially stomp on the bamboo with his foot and then break it off to eat:



We also got to gwak at the pandas for a long time, but I couldn't get good pics because of the indoor lighting and glass. They were absolutely adorable, and also munching on bamboo.

When we were done, we came back to Grandma and Grandpa's and collapsed. Then we roused ourselves to eat Indian food and have a delicious chocolate cake.