A Day at the Zoo

Angel, Booger Bear, and I were all off on Labor Day, so I had the oh-so-brilliant idea to take the kids to the zoo for the first time. I say, "oh-so-brilliant" rather sarcastically because apparently the entire Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex had the same idea.

Being the super-nice foster mommy that I am, I had gotten permission for the Booger's daddy to meet us at the zoo for the day. So he was able to be there for the baby's first trip to the zoo. My aunt was also in town that week, so she spent the day with us as well.

It was about 2,000 degrees outside seeing as how it was the first week of September in Texas, and all of the animals were hiding or sleeping in the shade. We spent quite a bit of time in the Texas Gulf and spider and bugs buildings because they were the only air conditioned places around. Not a whole lot of fun for Angel who is terrified of fish and me who really, REALLY doesn't care for insects. But at least it was cool in there. :-) .

The Booger's favorite part of the day was trying to bribe ice cream off of complete strangers and going under the misting cooling system in one part of the zoo. He seemed to like the petting zoo, and he was always very excited when he saw the animals toys. The elephants and other larger animals had big balls. (...okay... That didn't sound quite right, but you know what I mean...) Booger's demeaner went from, "Yeah, yeah... It's a big exotic animal..." to "OMG!!! BALLLLL!!!!" He also really enjoyed the poi pond. ...not because of the huge fish... but because there were ducks!!! Heck! If I'd known he'd be that excited about ducks, I would have saved myself $35 and taken him to the park down the street with the duck pond!

We were able to have some fun though. My aunt and I make our own fun, and we got Angel in on some of it. She refused to save my Aunt Linda from the scary alligator though. I had to step up and be the true hero in that frightening situation. My Aunt Linda was so scared... Her life was in danger! And Angel wouldn't save her. :-(

Angel did ride the super-fast runaway mechanical horse however. She's a little speed demon on those things. My aunt said she wasn't afraid until Angel dropped the reigns. Then she clung on for dear life. :-)

After battling the heat, the crowds, and the wild animals for a few hours, we all wised up and decided to go swimming instead. All in all it was actually a pretty good day. Everyone seemed to get along (thank goodness), and the kids had fun even though it was rather miserable out there. At least we got to end the day with a dip in the pool, and we got some good pictures out of it. We were even able to get the first-ever picture of the Booger with both his Mommy and Daddy. That alone made it worth the trip. Pictures with both his mommy and daddy will be a very rare commodity for Booger, so we were happy we could get it.