Peek-a... Zoo!

Last weekend Colin and Gillian undertook one the first of the traditional childhood rites of passage: a trip to the zoo! Along with good theater and wonderful museums, Pittsburgh has a great zoo. We've been to the zoo before, and Lea has been planning a return trip pretty much C&G were born. So, we piled into the car and set off for the zoo.

There we were met by Grandma Rose, Grandpa Greg, Uncle David, and Aunt Mercedes. I'm not really sure why nobody looks particularly happy in the following pictures as I think that we were all relatively content at the beginning of the our adventure.




Almost all of the the animals were out and active. Alas, most of the exhibits place the animals far enough away that it was hard to point them out to the kids. For example, here's the female lion taken with a telephoto lens:

And here's a picture of Gillian and the lion:

Despite the fact that the animals were pretty far away, Gillian went around pointing at everything (note her finger in this picture):

It turns out that Uncle David makes an excellent safari transport. He carried one or the other of the kids most of the day. And chances were that if David had one of the kids, Aunt Mercedes had the other.

From their perches on their aunt and uncle (or grandma and grandpa, and only seldom mommy or daddy), the kids did have the Opportunity to see a lot of animals:



By the afternoon, the kids were pretty tired. Colin zonked out in the stroller, but the Bean held on.

As a result, he missed out on what seemed to be one of his sister's favorites at the zoo... the Camel!

By the end though, even the Bean was running out of pep. She just kept holding on to a spoon that we got at lunch time:

All in all I believe everyone had a good time.