At Last, The Zoo!

annie has been asking to go to the zoo almost as long as she's been saying "i'ma play soccer in spring". and so, finally, we woke up yesterday morning, packed up supplies and headed down to the houston zoo.

we saw the baby giraffe, the baby elephant, the baby orangutan (who incidentally was my favorite). i tried to get a picture, but there was too much glare from the glass and reflection of the 6-year old orangutan-hog little girl that wouldn't get out of the way. i'm just saying. anyway, this cute little orangutan was messing with his sleeping daddy, trying to get him to wake up and play with him (hmmm where have i seen that behaviour before?) and the daddy finally wakes up all pissy and angrily shoos his little progeny away and the baby goes running to his mommy and she puts her arm around him and then takes him over to this corner where he's all nestling in to his mommy, alternately nursing and snuggling. seriously. i could have stayed there all day and watched. but then i start to get all sad because these animals are not in their natural habitat and it makes me very nervous and i start to feel like humans are evil monsters and then we move on to the next exhibit where i forget all about it because...

the warthog is pregnant! the warthog keeper is keeping the daddy company while the mommy gets an ultrasound and they just found out she has two piglets! cute! but apparently warthog daddy's are deadbeats, because as soon as they knock up their baby-mamas, they hit the road and get the hell out of dodge...or if that's not an option they just kick the living daylights out of the baby-mama. lovely.

thank goodness we got to see the jaguar, annies favorite. you know, diego has a jaguar at home and annie said if given the choice of any animals in the zoo, she would want a jaguar at her house.

we went back to the children's zoo and oh my goodness did we love it back there. and by we i mean annie and jasper. it was actually very cute and fun but addison and i very quickly realized that while the rest of the zoo was pretty quiet and not too crowded, the children's zoo is where alllll those people from allll those cars in the parking lot were gathering. it was madness. annie was game for almost everything though. she looked to see how the bugs see, she and jasper both looked out the big skyscraper windows, whe went down the slide from the animal house, she brushed the goats in the petting zoo, she hopped on the frog and then pretended she was a frog, she was having a great time. she just didn't want to leave. we had to let her run around in the playground for a while because it was the best. thing. ever. according to annie.

we almost made it out of the children's zoo when annie decided she really needed to see what it was like to see through a praying mantis' eyes. she must have liked it because she hung out there for something like 40 minutes. ok, two minutes, but it felt like forty.

jasper absolutely loved the zoo, too. if you could have heard him every time he saw a live, moving animal, you would have giggled every time like addison and i did. he would gasp, literally gasp in awe of what he was seeing. then he'd point and say something incomprehensible and then just stare with this wide-eyed smile on his face.

we had some lunch, went to the gift shop for a couple of "zoo keepsakes" and then left. i think we made it in and out in 3 1/2 hours and the kids were awesome the whole time. it was a really fun day. we got home and jasper napped while annie did her new "age 5+" puzzle in record time.

we sat on the patio outside and watched daddy mow while we drank apple juice and gin & tonics...mmmmm. good day. after jasper woke up we headed to the butcher to pick up a few filets for dinner and had a yummy steak and salad for dinner.

here is what remained of annie's 6 oz. filet:

the girl loves some steak.

and then, as i was tucking her into bed i said "i had a lot of fun with you today" and she said, "me too, mommy. i was a very good girl."

and she was right.