At the Zoo

(apologies in advance, it is simply impossible for me to blog about the zoo and not sing Simon and Garfunkel in my head. I don't know what effect this truly terrible song may have on the quality of this post. God help us all)

I had an impromptu day off Friday, which was super-cool and much-needed. On the way to pick up Grammy from the airport, the kids and I popped over to the Hogle Zoo for a very agreeable morning romp while Daddy was sick at home, cleaning up the guest room :(

The highlight of the visitwas definitely the tiger exhibit. They were cleaning the big enclosure, so all four tigers were in the smaller enclosure, which was awesome. The whole way to the zoo Sasha was chanting about tigers, "cute, sweet tigers," so seeing them up-close-and-personal was the fulfillment of all of her hopes for the day.

Sasha was not, however, so thrilled about the giant elephant sculpture. Whenever we passed it, she hid her face and hung on to me for dear life. To my untrained eyes he seems like a rather jolly, music-playing, sneezing (in the summer) elephant - clearly I am overlooking his more sinister qualities. The real elephants, BTW, were just fine in Sasha's book.

Ben took over as pathfinder this trip to the zoo and did a marvelous job reading the map and pointing us in the right direction, much to Sam's chagrin since he "already knew how to get there anyway." Sam did back off a little once I explained (with a little mommy-glare) that Ben was practicing his map-reading skills. And Ben did enjoy a moment of triumph when Sam chose the long way around instead of the shorter route he would have picked on the map had Sam not already been a quarter-mile down the path. Ah, siblings.

We ended our trip with the requisite ride on the train and then it was off to the airport to go see Grammy! A fabulous way to pass a spring morning - almost as good as a day at work :)