Peyton has been obsessed with animals for months now. He just loves them! His favorite toys are the ones that involve animals, like his Little People Barn. He is always making animal sounds, loves to read books that feature animals, and will constantly tell you little tidbits about various animals like what they eat and where they live. We've been wanting to take Peyton to the zoo, but it has been so hot this summer that there hasn't been a good time... until last Saturday, when the high was only supposed to be in the low 80s. We waited until Friday night to tell Peyton that we were going to take him to the zoo the next day, because had we told him any earlier, it is all we would have heard about until we got to the zoo on Saturday.
Peyton came into our room around 6:45 Saturday morning, which is way earlier than he normally wakes up, even on a weekend. I know it was like Christmas Eve for him and he couldn't wait any longer to wake up and go to the zoo. Too bad it doesn't even open until 10:00 and we had to wait for Kyle and Hunter to wake up anyway. Peyton wasn't too happy about that and asked me about 10 times that morning if it was time to go yet. We left the house around 9:30 and arrived at the zoo a little after 10:00. About every five minutes during the car ride to the zoo, Peyton had to remind us where we were going and what kinds of animals we were going to see.
When you first walk into the zoo, there are two of these lion statues. Peyton didn't want to sit on it alone, so Kyle got in the picture too.
We started off our tour of the zoo in the children's zoo area. There are lots of photo ops in there, including turtle shells, a cocoon, and this bird's nest for the kids to climb in. Again, Peyton did not want to get in any of them, but I was finally able to convince him to sit with me on the nest.
Here's Peyton as a turtle!
We continued through the children's zoo and saw animals like ducks and sea otters. Next we went to the barnyard area. There were animals typical to farms, like horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and donkeys. Peyton and Kyle went into the petting zoo, while Hunter and I stayed outside. Peyton got to brush several goats. I think he loved it!
After the petting zoo, we headed into the barn so that Kyle and Peyton could wash their hands. In the barn, Peyton got to pretend that he was riding a horse.
Here is some proof that Hunter was at the zoo too. He's with a cow. Hunter loved the zoo about as much as he loved his first walk around our neighborhood - he didn't open his eyes one time.
I won't bore everyone with a slide show of the 30+ pictures of all the animals that we saw. But, we got to see various birds, turtles, rhinos, zebras, a leopard, cheetah, giraffe, lions, monkeys and elephants, among others. Peyton was quite disappointed that there were no tigers or hippos. There used to be tigers and hippos at that zoo, but I'm not sure what happened to them. In fact, several exhibits were closed. For as expensive as going to the zoo is, I'd like to think they could at least take care of their animals properly, so that they could all be on display. Guess not...Anyway, Peyton had a great time at the zoo and definitely did not want to leave. It was creeping into his nap time though, and he and Kyle had to go to a birthday party later in the afternoon, so we had to go. It also got a little hot in the afternoon. I think the weathermen were wrong about their low 80s prediction. Peyton told anyone that would listen to him about the zoo over the next few days. He told his teachers and friends at daycare and even asked me to call Grandmom, Pop-Pop and Uncle Jer so that he could tell them about the zoo too.
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