On Saturday we had the opportunity of attending Alice and Blake's birthday party at the zoo. We can say that we really love the zoo, we have been four times this year and luckily for us we have not had to pay any of these four times thanks to the zoo free days during the winter and a dear friend who has let us into the park with her member pass, thanks Jenn we appreciate it very much. We started off the morning at 11:30 eating zebra printed(marble) cupcakes, they were delicious, and putting on our wild safari sunglasses for the occasion.
Carson was not too thrilled at the idea of shades, but he went along with it for the picture!
Little miss Sydni also had an to get in on the action of the wild tiger glasses, quite cute right?
Aunt Rachel also came along for the zoo adventure and she was quite the help with Carson he just adores his aunt, I love that they get along so well together. It made the whole zoo trip more enjoyable because with the help of Rachel Carson was able to get out of the stroller more often and see the animals at a closer distance, thanks Rachel for coming with us.
Rachel just had to try on Betty's hat, with the hat and the sunglasses the first thought I had was that she looked like she was from Crocodile Dundee.
Staring down his delicious cupcake, "yummy!"
The cupcakes were a big hit especially for Alice and Carson. These two are best buds when in nursery, they always have each others backs. By the time cupcakes and singing were done these two looked like they had enjoyed the cupcakes a little to much, time to bring out the wipes!
It was not planned, but the vest I put Sydni in made her look like a she belonged in the zoo with her little bear ears, simply adorable(Sydni of course :)
After cupcakes and passing out of the goody boxes full of animal crackers and caramel popcorn we head out as a group to explore the park.
First stop the Rhino exhibit, finally they were out we only had to come four times this year for them to come out in our Utah weather!
Look Mom, a "Ooh, Ooh, Ahh, Ahh," or in other words a monkey.
And a few monkeys it was.
Teresa let us borrow her double stroller to go to the zoo, it was fantastic, didn't really want to have to carry Sydni in the infant carrier the entire time. This is how she rode for the first part of of her first zoo experience, all bundled up, she fell fast a sleep for about 45 minutes it was nice. Sydni did very well, she only go upset when she wanted to eat and once she nursed she was calm as a clam.
Carson loved pointed out all the animals and making the animals sounds if he knew them, such a smart boy and one proud Mama.
It was funny to watch Rachel would pose and Carson would point, here he is pointed at these two cute Lemurs.
Betty Mom was kind enough to take a picture of us by the little otter figurine. Unfortunately, the otters were hiding while we passed by, Carson was pretty upset actually. This is the one and only exhibit he has had interest in all four times we have come to the zoo.
We got some great pictures of the California Sea Lions, from this one on the rock to the one below where they are swimming next to each other under water.
Some new attractions to the zoo happened to not be real animal exhibits, but Lego exhibits that were scattered throughout the park. This Polar bear exhibit took 2 days and 9,500 pieces to complete, looked pretty neat and pretty realistic for being complied out of legos.
Here is a real Polar Bear to compare the lego one two, pretty close right?
For the first time we got a pretty good look at the Grizzly bears the previous times they were more or less hibernating in their little hut.
Where to next mom?
Where were able to briefly get a picture of the giraffe, because Sydni was by this time screaming at the tops of her lungs she was one hungry little girl, this was also when we split from the group and continue to explore the rest of the zoo by ourselves. And boy were my thighs burning on the way out of the giraffe exhibit with the hill I had to climb, after doing what seemed like a million one leg and jump squats on Thursday and doing a 5K with my mom earlier my legs up this hill felt like they were going to collapse, luckily for us the kids didn't go rolling down the hill because I just could not make it!
I was surprised how well Sydni nursed being in a foreign environment as she is a picky nurser, but after a short needed break to feed all the kids and myself we continued on to see the rest of the animals, starting with the Big cat exhibits. I was quite disappointment in them, no fault of the zoo, but most of the cats you could not see they were sleeping in their beds away from the windows.
We did manage to find these tigers and got a nice ride on them, they were quiet friendly and very calm for having kids climbing all over them, took the opportunity to take a photo shoot.
After searching and searching we finally found this snow leopard, funny enough he should have been easy to find was right next to the fence, but apparently not.
On the backside of the zoo, we found these cute little lego penguins. If memory serves me right they took about 3,500 pieces to build.
This time around had to get a picture of Carson had the historic Lion drinking fountain at the age of two. Why did I need a picture while he was two at the drinking fountain you may ask, well I have a picture of me at the ripe old age of two at the same drinking fountain, just in a different location in the park. It did take some coaching to get him to drink out of it, I could tell he was a bit scared of it at first.
Aunt Rachel was a big help as you can see, but like any two year old it is much more fun to play in the water.
The picture was on a request of Rachel, she just loves dogs and wolves look like dogs!
Such a sweet picture of Carson and Rachel walking up the hill on the backside of Hogle Zoo.
Crazy girls with even crazier leopard and tiger classes, we fit in perfectly at the zoo.
Awe my little one peeping through the fence to catch a glimpse at a raven and this hawk below.
How do we measure up, I would say we are tiny compared to the great apes the gorillas.
Funny story about this picture, a group of teenagers were taking individual pictures of each other in the group and one mentioned I wish we could get a picture together, I offered to take the pictures only on the stipulation that one of them would take one for me of our group, thankfully they agreed. FYI I would have done it even if they refused to take one of us, but who does that?
When I took these pictures I didn't realize what animal we were depicting, only that the animal was made out of legos. When I got home I studied them and found them to be orangutans. The last one is pretty funny two headed orangutan!
Rachel the orangutan
My cute little Carson orangutan.
And as promised two headed orangutan just in time for Halloween.
Next we headed over to see the elephants, cute as ever baby Zuri. I could be a little partial to elephants, but we may never know.
Our final exhibits were located in the reptile house, and I might have to say this area is Carson's favorite place, so much to see and do. My next favorite animals are the crocodiles, yeah I just might be a little weird when it comes to favorite animals, mine are not the cuddly type that is for sure. I wish Hogle Zoo had a Nile Crocodile, but this Siamese one will have to do.
Another requested picture from Rachel the bats, I think this picture turned out quite nice, they are ready for Halloween.
Can't remember what they little lizards are called, but it took some convincing to pry Carson away to go see some other animals, it took me saying he could see some snakes.
This particular snake was his favorite, he kept going in and out of the water which Carson thought was pretty funny for some reason. This time around he loved going from glass enclosure to glass enclosure to see if he could locate the snake, and when he did he would exclaim "There it is!"
He became really good at spotting the reptiles as they were hiding, he was very methodical at looking all over their glass enclosures. He would look up and down, left to right, under and and around bushes, and under rocks, under a rock was where he found this Gila monster. It became a game of eye spy for him, I loved what his face when he would show me where he found a particular reptile.
To finish out our trip to the zoo Rachel treated us to a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. At first Carson really did not want to be put on this baby hippo, but as soon as the ride began it all changed.
She loves to pose, but she does look perfect on her very own gray wolf, see she loves them. She also spent her money in the gift shop on a new gray wolf stuff animal.
Priceless picture of a little boy enjoying his ride on the Merry-Go-Round, he is such a happy boy most of the time and almost always has a smile on his face.
On our way out we happened upon the last lego exhibit of sea turtles, which I believe took a couple hundred each to make.
We thought there was no more lego exhibits, but look what we found a whole jungle scene in the gift shop, it was very detailed including a lego monkey holding a banana.
Thanks Alice and Blake for inviting us to share in your trip to the zoo, it was a lot of fun and we enjoyed ourselves very much!
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