Today completed our celebration of Ella's birthday with a family outing to our Oakland Zoo. I am happy to report 3 things. One, we all had an awesome time-- one of the best zoo outings ever. Two, no one broke any bones (Ella made us each promise we wouldn't as we were walking in). And three, in terms of the membership fee (but not in terms of the ER deductible) we paid last time we went, after just 2 months, our membership has paid for itself! Yay!
We did a few things to make this trip to the zoo a little more special for our birthday girl. First we named her the "Boss for the Day" and let her decide what we'd see and in what order. Of course, this meant we started at and spent most of the time in the children's zoo. Also, we got Ella a little key that she could use to unlock boxes of narration and information at each animal we visited. Dave and I found this fascinating and learned all sorts of new things. Did you know, for example, that lemurs have scent glands in their wrists and use them to lubricate their long tails with smell and then confront each other to have stink wars?
(Open this picture bigger to see someone hiding over Delia's left shoulder.)
A cool and overcast school day really kept the crowds down.
The girls love this meercat viewing area. They need to climb through a tunnel to get to it.
Ella's special surprise today was an introduction to a rather extensive ride area. Yes, in previous visits Dave and I did engage in an evil parenting plot to keep this whole side of the zoo a secret from her. Our membership gave us 14 free rides, though, and today we took some of them on the carousel, little cars and train. Ella said this was the best part of the day. When we asked what her favorite animal was, she even answered, "The rides!"
If you want to see all the pictures of the zoo, present opening and cake double click on the Picasa slide show in the sidebar.
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