Longmired in Life: A Day at the Zoo

I have been wanting to take Wyatt to the Zoo for a few months now. The thing about Wyatt is that he isn't the 'easiest' child to corral into a stroller so until recently I really thought it would be way too challenging to take him. It just so happened that Ben's (new) company had a family day planned at the zoo last Saturday so we decided to take the opportunity and go! (His first day was last Monday, but they still invited us to the Zoo outing)

I somehow managed to snap a cute picture of Ben and Wyatt right at the entrance. Trouble is, I had no memory card in my camera. Uggh. Fortunately, the gift shop sold them so I was able to buy one. Never mind the 360% markup they put on the piddly little 2GB memory card! This was his first trip to the Zoo, so markup be damned I had to document the day! (And document I did. I took 87 pictures at the low-price of 28 cents/each .... Is the GT in me coming out yet?)

We started out at the Elephants.

Then moved through Africa. (Can you tell we have a difficult time getting him to pose/smile for a picture?)

Then to the tigers

And to the Endangered Umbebe (omg. who knew the zoo had so many umbrellas?)

My favorite part of the zoo has always been the House of Reptiles. I HATE snakes, but I love to look at them. Especially the skeery ones. There were many a' Crocodile Hunter impersonations done in the House of Reptiles! Wyatt seemed to like them too. Hopefully I was successful in getting my 'snakes are scary and dangerous' message through to him.

We managed to get him to (kinda) look at the camera here by saying "look! an umbrella!".

We still had time to kill before lunch, so we headed to the kid area to ride the train and carousel. We met up with some friends and their daughter (they were actually Ben's connection to interview for this new position) to ride.

Here we are again with that whole no looking at the camera!

We did get one family picture ... too bad W wasn't looking :(

We attempted to get this picture several times. Do you know how hard it is to get 2 adults and 2 kids to smile and look at the same camera at the same time? I'm pretty sure you have a better chance of winning the lottery!

We rode the Carousel next, which Wyatt liked, but he did talk about the train the whole time. It was Ben's turn to be in pictures so he called dibs on riding with Wyatt. I (stupidly) thought you had to be actually sitting on an animal to ride (as opposed to standing) so I looked pretty silly sitting on a Tiger's back shooting pictures of W the whole time. Live and learn, right?

After the carousel, it was time for lunch, so we ate quickly while doing our best to avoid a honey-badger meltdown. It was naptime, and we still had to see the Giant Pandas before leaving.

So we did. Wyatt LOVED them!

We stopped by the Elephants one more time before leaving. Now, let me tell you one more story before sharing this sweet picture. Ben had just lectured me on the fact that not all my pictures need to be 'Annie Liebowitz photography' and that I was simply not going to capture a perfectly posed, smiling picture. Whatev. This photo may not be professional, but I think its pretty sweet ....

BAM! In your face, Ben!

The last thing I had to do on the way out is stop by the gift shop. I figured I needed to buy Wyatt something to commemorate his first Zoo trip. Since I felt like his favorite animal was the Pandas (he would get so pissed if they walked away where he couldn't see them), I decided to buy him one. After the memory card debacle, I was totally prepared to take out a second mortgage for this stupid stuffed animal but to my surprise it was only $11!

Here is the tired Panda with his new stuffed Panda ...