The Zoo

This past weekend since we were home and not at a football game, we took Avery and Carter to the zoo in Columbia.  See previous trips when she was one and when she was two.

The statues were a surprise hit this time around and she had to have her picture taken with all of them.

My two girls taking a gander at the elephants.  Between some of the educational cartoons and what she learns at school, she was shouting animal facts at us all morning long.

"Elephants are from Africa."

Carter was less interested in the animals and more interested in the large amounts of people walking by.

You get to get pretty close to the kangaroos.

Avery got to touch and help some stranger feed a giraffe.

And touch one of these furry things.  A lalalam?  Llalma?  Lllama?  Alapaca?  Yeah...furry thing.

And to pretend milk a pretend cow.  She was sure to make sure Laura knew that it was just pretend.

She got to hand feed some aggressive goats.

There was a carousel that we got to take a spin on.

Avery chose a tiger as her animal.

Carter was not so excited about the carousel as Avery, but he did a great job going along for the day.

Avery was braver than Mommy and touched this snake.

Working on her modeling pose with one of the monkey statues.

The last thing we did was the aquarium and it was her favorite part by far.  It may have been the air conditioning or it may have been the fish.

One of her shows that she watches is "Octonauts" and they learn all about underwater sea creatures so she had a great time telling us stories about some of the animals that she recognized.  In this picture she is excitedly telling us a story about this kind of fish that has some kind of special talent.

(Avery reminded me that this is a tiger fish that stings you if you touch its spikes)

Telling us all about the penguins.

Zoo pt 2

We have gotten a little behind on blogs due to vacation and fun things, but I am going to try and catch up.  Last weekend we decided to go to the Zoo in Columbia.  Avery really enjoyed it last year and figured she would enjoy it more now that she knows more about animals.  We were so right.  She had a blast running from exhibit to exhibit yelling at the top of her lungs, "MORE ANIMALS!!!"

We walked into the gorilla exhibit just as one was passing the window.

 Big Smiles for seeing a gorilla.  She was so excited she flipped mommy off.

This is her watching the elephants.  Every single exhibit she would point out the Mommy animal, the daddy animal and if there were 3, the Avery animal.  We would have to say the Avery animal was sleeping if it was not there or she would keep asking where was her animal?

 There was also a petting zoo where she had a lot of fun feeding a goat.

 She also had a blast on the merry go round until it stopped.  Then the crying started.

 She enjoyed the aquarium as usual.

 I think she would have watched the fish swim around all day and loved shouting "Sharks!" when they would swim past.

Fathers Day at the Zoo

Sunday was Fathers day, so we decided to take Avery to the zoo in Columbia, SC.  Her favorite book over the past few weeks has been her animal books and she can point out almost all of them.  The best is when we ask her where the lion is and she goes "rarrrrr".  Hence the trip to the zoo.  As a bonus fathers got in free.

The day was filled with a lot of stares, waving at the various animals to come closer, and random shouts of excitement when she would see a new animal.

 Looking at the monkeys with mommy.  Sheer amazement at the animals all day.

 Where is the _________?  I don't know what animal she was pointing at, but that was the routine at each exhibit.

 Walking to go see the gorilla...

 Daddy carrying her back to see the elephants.

 One of her favorite animals...Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

 The favorite part of the trip was the aquarium.  I don't know if it was because it was air conditioned or because she could get up close.  We had to pry her away from the glass at the end.  She would point at the fish as they would swim by her and randomly shout out gibberish to them trying to get their attention.

 A happy fathers day at the zoo!