Phoenix Zoo

Today was David's last day of Spring break and we didn't want it to end with us having done nothing fun. So we took the kids to the Zoo and it was great. We are so glad we did. It isn't very often that we take the kids out and just have a lot of fun together as a family, so I am really glad that we did it today. Dutch of course loved it. When we were walking into the zoo he was already so amazed to just watch the ducks and the turtles before we even got inside. We had to coax him away from those and promise him we would go see the bear and the tiger. That's what he was most excited for. He pretty much ran almost the entire four hours that we were there. Occasionally he would get in the stroller to rest but that lasted at most about five minutes and then he would be off and running to see the next animal. The bear was wake and active today so Dutch had a ball watching her. She kept pacing back and fourth and then she got a drink of water out of the creek and Dutch loved that. He kept telling me over and over, "the bear drink the water". She was pacing behind the bushes so she would disappear for a minute and then come back and Dutch kept saying, "where the bear go, bye bye bear", it was super cute. And lucky for us the tiger was awake as well. At first she was just laying there licking her paws, so we watched for a while and then we starting walking around her exhibit to see the lions. While we were walking she stood up and walked right into the middle and roared really loud twice. It was so awesome. And holy cow she can roar loud. Dutch loved that, so did I.

Maylee of course could care less about the animals. She was just upset to have to be in the stroller. So we held her a lot. But now that she is only walking, she just wants to walk. So we let her walk, a lot, which she loved and she got a ton of attention from the other zoo visitors when she was walking. We could have put her in a cage and let her walk around and I swear people would stop to watch. It's pretty cute. Dutch had the hardest time seeing what we were pointing at... Maylee keeping herself entertained by trying to buckle her straps... And if you know Dutch you know that we loves tractors and big trucks so when we came to the part of the zoo that had old tractors for the kids to play on Dutch could care less about the animals and only wanted to play on the tractors. Peeking at the sheepMaylee loved touching the animal And of course we had to let the kids ride the carousel. Dutch remembered riding one at the train park and really wanted to go again. So we took both of them. Maylee liked it for the most part but about half way through it she was done and wanted me to hold her. We had a great day and really enjoyed spending it together as a family. We know that it wore the kids out because they both fell asleep on the way home at about 5:30. Maylee woke up about 40 minutes later but went back to bed at 7:30 (her usual bedtime) with no fussing at all. And Dutch just woke up about 5 minutes ago at 9:45. We are hoping that we will be able to get him to go back to sleep and sleep through the night for us. Hopefully he'll eat something, get a full belly and sleep til morning. He probably will but it will probably have to be in our bed in between David and I, his favorite place to be.