It was such a nice day out, cool and party cloudy. The perfect zoo day. Here is a photo, just like last year of the boys in front of the pond. (Next time I will take it before we spend 15 minutes looking at the turtles and enormous fish... as you can see they weren't focused on posing.)
As always (Ethan is a creature of habit), we went onto the west zoo in which we saw the flamingos first. Here's Ethan standing on one leg just like them.
We then went to the discovery reef. Ethan always has loved this. The twins also really enjoyed it - more so then in the past. It was fun to see their faces light up. They both were pointing and talking to the fish.
Ethan showing the boys the manatee at Manatee Bay and also the sting ray that had just passed (you can see the tip of its tail in the lower right).
We then saw this cutie... wide awake... which is so rare!
We continued on through the west zoo, but not without melt downs... I'm not going to sugar coat it here folks... it was not the perfect day at the zoo as I had hoped. A half hour in we got the beginning rumblings of pending melt downs and apparently I misjudged my window of opportunity... in that I thought I had one. Soon thereafter all three were melting down in different loud head-turning ways for the next hour (which seemed quite frankly like four hours). Despite our attempts to appease them with crackers, raisins and water (which did partially work) and many 'oooo's and ahhhh's' over the neat animals, we were unsuccessful and decided to just try lunch. Okay, that and the fact that Ethan said dramically a few (thousand) times that he couldn't walk anymore because he was so hungry. Never mind breakfast was 2 1/2 hours prior and he had a bunch of snacks. And the fact that Collin launched his cup at the Colobus Monkeys in protest (not of them, but of us)... that might have been the real reasons. After lunch, which was quite the challenge as well (but I'll spare you those details), they got a little better. The twins were fine as long as we were moving and the animal was big and close enough for them to see... Ethan was fine as long as we did what he wanted.
Side story: right after lunch we went on a bathroom run. In there I spoke to Ethan (once again) about his choice of words and tone earlier and asked him to not talk like that anymore (hoping the rest of the visit would go better). He said "I'm all done with my bad choice words for the day mommy. I only have good ones left." What? So there's a quota? Who knew?
On the car ride home, Ethan and Collin passed out the last ten minutes of the half an hour ride. This was apparently their power nap. Oliver never slept. All ran around the house all night revved with adrenaline the rest of the night. It always amazes me when people tell me their kids just pass out in the car and they can't wake them up. Mine never do. Or if they do, it's maybe 10-15 minutes tops and they are good to go. Why?
All in all it was a good day and we did see almost all of the west zoo and all of Asia, only missing the north zoo. However, I am not so sure that Ms. Erin won't request a vacation day next time I suggest we go to the zoo...
Just for fun, here's the photo of them in front of the pond last May.
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