The LA Zoo

It's always fun going to visit Opa & Oma's house. The minute we walk through the door they have

"Camp Potter"

all set up in their living room. They set up 5 tents for the kids & there is ALWAYS a special surprise waiting for them by their tent. This trip they had animal masks for each of the kids. They loved it!

So to keep with the "animal" theme, we decided to take the kids to the LA Zoo for our Labor Day Weekend fun. Good grief. Do you know how much it costs to get into the zoo these days? Don't ask.

You know your family is getting too big when it's cheaper for your family to buy a FAMILY YEAR PASS

than to buy individual tickets for one day. ha ha ha. We are LA Zoo members now. Yahoo.

The first exhibit we saw was the sea otters. Bladen was SO fascinated with the animals swimming past his little hands. He kept pointing at them & said "LOOK!" It was VERY exciting.

The kids loved the alligator, or as Bladen called it: the

"Croco-Dinosaur."

They had fun little hands on exhibits around the zoo for the kids too. The girls were totally into the snakes. Lorien LOVED touching them. The animal handler tried to had a snake to Bladen for a picture & he jumped out of his skin & fell into the cage. It was hilarious! Poor kid was scared to death.

Bladen & Taya's favorite exhibit was the squirrel monkeys. Go figure. THEY are little monkeys so of course they're going to like the monkeys.

Taya got one of them really riled up. It was screaming at her & she was talking back to it. It was HILARIOUS. She would laugh every time it would yell at her & her laughter would make it even madder. I don't know what she did to upset him, but he didn't like her one bit.

Cadence was fascinated with the Rain Forest animals part of the zoo. She is studying the Rain Forest in Science right now & told me all about several of the animals in the zoo. She is like a walking sponge. She absorbs information like I did when I was her age. She is SO brilliant. She was most excited by the Harpy Eagle because that is her teacher's favorite animal. She HAD to get her picture taken with it to show Ms. Farmer.

Craiger is getting the cutest personality as he gets older. He wouldn't stop giggling in the monkey area. He was cracking up. What a cutie pie.

Opa & Oma were there with us & we had a blast. Oma bought all the kids snow cones (& we had bees following us the rest of the afternoon.). They are always SO fun to do things with. They love to spoil their grandbabies. We just love being with them.

Oma's favorite animal was this mountain goat. She grabbed my camera & took 38 pictures of him (no joke). I deleted most of them, of course, but I loved this shot she took. Great picture OMA!

Bladen wanted Daddy to hold him all day so he could see over the fences & gates. He realized that sitting on Daddy's shoulders made him pretty tall & he loved it.

Cadence & Lorien loved the gorilla. We sat & watched this guy for almost 20 minutes. He was HUGE & he seemed to love having us there. The girls couldn't get enough of him.

I'm SO grateful to have such happy, well-behaved kids. They had SO MUCH FUN at the zoo & they were SO good there. We spent over 4 hours walking around & they never even complained. I am so thankful we have these memories. It was a GREAT day.

Bladen was getting tired toward the end of the day & eventually fell asleep on Trek's head.

Then on our way out the front gate, Taya fell asleep too. It 's exhausting walking in direct sunlight in 100 degree temperatures for 4 hours straight. They were real troopers.

Thank you Opa & Oma for such a fun day. We love the LA Zoo & will be back soon.