If You Feed a Giraffe Some Lettuce…

Malia had no school today. And as things have been feeling really heavy around here of late, so many worries about so many things weighing all of us down, we decided that we needed to do something fun today. So, Malia and I went to the zoo. It has been a few years since our last visit, and it was an entirely different experience. As a teenager, Malia is far more content to spend a good amount of time watching her favorite animals rather than snatching one glimpse and then dashing off to see the next occupant.

Here are a few highlights of our trip. We had the opportunity to feed the giraffes. It was pretty cool to see their long, purple tongues as they reached out to nab their snacks! The baby colobus monkey was super cute. The little guy was surrounded by a circle of watchful adult monkeys, and the little one would jump around, grab the long hair on the tail of one of the adults, move to the next and jump on their head, and then head back to mom for a quick snuggle before returning to his antics. We also caught a glimpse of the baby orangutan, who is young and newly on exhibit. In fact, Malia was the one to spot her and once she said out loud that she had spotted the baby, the group at the habitat we were observing went from just the two of us to a crush of visitors lickety split. Honestly, I felt lucky to be able to sneak a peak in between all the other people. We also got to watch the polar bear swim around which was cool. Bears are so huge that they look like they shouldn’t be able to swim, but they are definitely comfortable in the water.

It was good to get out for a bit and spend some time ignoring the normal stresses and worries of our lives. A bit of play can help rejuvenate us and give our lives a better balance. I think I need to remember to do that more often.

An Old Favorite

In the last little bit, Kevin and I have realized that as our youngest child, there are a lot of things we haven’t done with Malia. Activities, outings, disciplinary tactics, etc. that were commonplace when the boys were all young were left by the wayside as they grew up. As the youngest by a pretty big span (there are nearly eleven years between Daniel and Malia), Malia has missed out in some ways due to that mental “moving on to a new stage.” Once we made that realization, Kev and I have been working to fill in some of those gaps.

When the boys were young, the zoo was one of our favorite places for an outing. Malia has been to the zoo on multiple occasions, but it has been a while, two and a half years in fact. I like to blame a pandemic for part of that, but the other part was the waning interest of the boys. When family outings occur, Malia has gotten outnumbered, and we have ended up going other places. The last time she got voted down we ended up in a trilobite quarry, which she enjoyed, but she was really sad about not getting to go to the zoo. Knowing Malia didn’t have school today, I put a trip to the zoo on the calendar. Matthew still had school and Kev had work, so it was a girls’ day out.

Going to the zoo with a ten-year-old Malia was calmer than our trips were of old. I didn’t have to run to keep up with a pack of little ones with miniscule attention spans, tell anyone to stay with the group, or prevent anyone from climbing into the bear habit. We shunned our traditional route through the zoo and wandered wherever Malia’s interest took us. We saw all the animals, but we did it in a different order. She still got to ride the carousel, which she has always loved. We saw the rhinos closer than we ever have in all our myriad of previous visits. We also caught a glimpse of a one-month-old Colombus monkey and got to see another young monkey lose its balance and fall off a branch which was super cute. We wandered past the sea lions just at training time. As we’ve discovered in the past, the animals are more active in the cooler weather than in the heat of the summer which made for a fun morning.

Taking a step back to have these adventures with Malia is good for her, but it’s also good for me. Sometimes I get too caught up in the whirlwind that is life and taking time to smell the roses (or the rhinos, which is not nearly as pleasant from an olfactory standpoint) is a blessing. Having adult children comes with its own set of challenges and being able to take a morning returning to an old favorite gave me a much-needed bit of calm. Malia loved it too. And we got to stop at Crown Burger for lunch on the way home which we could never do when Matthew was with us.

I think we had better plan more of these outings because as I well know, before long she’ll be too old to spend a morning with her mom talking to the animals.

The Food Chain

Matthew and Malia love going to the zoo just as it opens in the morning because that is when they feed the animals. On our last visit, we got to see the lions eat breakfast. The keepers tossed in a big cow leg or something like it and the lions chomped away. Today was another visit and this time breakfast was a bit more gruesome. The leopard’s meal was a bunny, already dead, but a bunny nevertheless. As we watched the leopard rip its head off, Malia said, “Now I know what the inside of the bunny looks like.” Apparently, she’s one tough chick. After that, watching one of the small cats eat a mouse whole was pretty anticlimactic!

The other highlight of our excursion was a photo op with the gorilla. He came right over to the glass and eyeballed the kiddos. They thought it was super cool. As for me, I just watched my way through the remakes of “The Planet of the Apes” and was struck by just how big gorillas are. Because they are big. Way bigger than I am. I a fight, they would definitely win. But the kids were not burdened by such thoughts and just thought it was a fantastic adventure.

I’m Not Lion, It Was a Great Day!

Matthew, Malia and I went on an off-track adventure this morning. We haven’t been to the zoo for awhile and two new polar bears have recently moved to the zoo so we went to see them. We arrived just as the zoo was opening and for the first hour, the only people we saw were zoo keepers. Honestly, it felt like we had the whole zoo to ourselves. It was also breakfast time for the animals so we got to see them noshing on their varied breakfast eats. Even the lions, who are normally just lounging out in the sun, were enthusiastically partaking. They had settled in right next to the glass so we got an up close and personal view of them. It was pretty cold when we arrived, but as we’ve discovered in the past, the animals seem to be more active when it is cooler and pretty much all of them were eating, playing or roaming their habitats. It was a great day to be at the zoo!

Wild!

I took Matthew and Malia to the zoo this morning. Not only do I try to do some fun things like that when they are off-track, but they did such a great job on migraine day that I figured they deserved an outing. The animals were super active and running all over the place. It was St. Patrick's Day and the zoo keepers had given many of the animals green paper chains, painted cardboard boxes, banners celebrating the holiday, etc. as enrichment activities. It was so fun to watch the wild and wooly ones explore the new additions to their habitats.

Matthew and Malia were also pretty wild. After a long, cold winter, they were pretty stir crazy and ready to be outside. I had to tell Matthew repeatedly to slow down and wait for his aged mother!

It was a great day!

Everybody's Zooing It

Today was zoo day. Matthew and Nathan are off track and all the other kids are on Spring Break, so we joined Rachael and her kids and Esther at the zoo. Kev even took the day off so he could join us. It was pretty cold which meant that there were not a whole lot of other folks there. It didn’t start to get busy until around 11 a.m. when it started to warm up. We were done and headed out by then so we really didn’t have many crowds to contend with. That is probably a good thing because we had kids running all over the place. None of my boys have been to the zoo since the African savannah portion was completed and the train reopened so they were pretty excited about that. We also got to see the baby orangutan that was born a few weeks ago. Add in a stop for lunch on the way home and it was a great outing! (Just in case any of you are wondering about the peep in all the pictures, Esther assigns her students a project where they take pictures “hanging with their peeps” while they are on spring break. She does the same thing and then takes the pictures to school afterward to use for a writing assignment.)

Cousins:

A couple of monkeys

The big boys and the little girls

Riding the train

Indian Summer

It’s almost the end of October and we still have days where the temperature is nearly 80 degrees. Although I’m not a fan of the heat, the warm weather has made for some pleasant outings for Malia and me. I had an appointment with my neurologist on Wednesday which meant a trip to the zoo. This is the first time we’ve visited since the latest construction project was completed and Malia was super excited to ride the train and finally see the lions!

Today Malia had a field trip to the pumpkin patch. She has been looking forward to this field trip all month and has been giving me daily reminders about her “pumpkin trip.” Can I just tell you how much we love our little local pumpkin grower? There are other pumpkin patches in the area, but none of the others have this:

Or this:

Or this:

Malia had a great time and can hardly wait to go again with the whole family so she can choose another pumpkin!

It Was Raining Pretty Hard

Nathan and Matthew have been fighting a lot lately and by a lot I mean that they are either fighting or sleeping. So when I left to go visiting teaching this afternoon, I was hoping I had the same number of children when I got home. When I returned, not only had they not killed each other, but Nathan, Matthew and Malia had been working together on a project. They had gathered up all of their stuffed animals, of which there are a plethora, and had made themselves a zoo called “The Ark.”

Every good business needs a sign letting people know whether the business is open or closed...

...and an arrow letting you know where to go. Only the really great ones give you money to buy your ticket.

The ticket booth complete with information board and a Saran Wrap window.

 

One of the ticket booth employees.

 

The Ark staff welcomes you to the zoo.

The vast assortment of animals inside The Ark.

As for the name of their zoo, I think it is pretty ironic. While the heavy rains haven’t caused us any problems, there is flooding in other parts of our community.

Another Zoo-pendous Excursion

My boys were out of school today for spring break, so we decided to break out of your normal routine and head to the zoo. Although none of them complained when I took Malia a few weeks ago, I knew that they would enjoy a visit as well. The weather was overcast and cool, just perfect. I know many of you would dispute that (as evidenced by the complete lack of crowds at the zoo minus the dozen elementary schools and one old folks’ home fields trips we crossed paths with), but for me it was ideal. Even when it is cool, sunny is problematic for me. The sun beating down on my very dark head=migraine=craptastic day. So overcast means no crap…apart from the copious amounts produced by the occupants of the zoo, that is.

I won’t bore you with long descriptions of how clever the elephants were or how bad the small animal house smelled, I’ll just share a few pictures.

  This girl seems to have a thing for monkeys…her Auntie Esther would be proud. :-)

 You would think Matthew would look more excited considering he is close enough to his favorite animal that we got a face full of shedding tiger fur, but at least his eyes are open.

Two At the Zoo

I've been seeing a new doctor for my headaches and since her office is only five minutes from the zoo, after my appointment last week Malia and I spent a couple of hours checking out the animals. I didn't tell her we were going and she was so excited when we arrived that she jumped up and down and said, "Thank you, thank you for coming to the zoo!"

We have never been to the zoo without the boys and it was really great to be able to go at Malia's pace, seeing the things she wanted to see. That means we saw elephants, monkeys (neither of which surprised me) and snakes (which did). There was one particular monkey that came right up to the glass and just stared at Malia. She, of course, stared right back. We stood at that particular cage for a good five minutes or so as she studied that funny little monkey.

(I know the picture is a little blurry. It was dim inside the monkey house and taking great pics with my iPod camera is still a work in progress.)

She was brave enough to sit on the metal elephant's trunk for a picture, something she has never done before and didn't look all that pleased about this time even though it was her idea.

And because the crowds were not overwhelming and the line was not ridiculously long, she got to ride the carousel. She was so excited once she had her ticket in her hand and was waiting for her turn that she simply could not get close enough.

She stood just like that the entire time we were waiting in line. Her response when the carousel started to spin was, "This is awesome!!" Needless to say, she was pretty bummed when her turn was over. She really loved it. 

 
When we were done at the zoo we ate lunch at Wendy’s. We don’t eat out all that often and when we do, most of the time we do take out so that we can cook something for Matthew at home. So eating in the restaurant is a treat for Malia.

Because of all Matthew's food allergies, spur of the moment trips like this are always hard with him because we have to plan in advance or be home by mealtimes since he can't safely eat out. So being able to just go on an outing on a whim and stay as long as we want is nice. I'll have to take advantage of it before Malia gets old enough for school. And she is so grateful about our excursion (she mentioned it in her prayers for days afterward) that it makes me perfectly willing to take her again.