Zoo

It's been ages since I've been to the zoo - I know I went once or twice with G when he was little, but couldn't remember if the last of those trips included M or not. And we've been to the Port Defiance Zoo a couple times with friends, but I'm not sure we'd ever been to our zoo, which is shocking considering how much M loves animals. So when he asked on Friday if we could go to the zoo, I decided we should go this weekend.

Started off with the penguins, as usual:

Saw lots of other animals - jaguar, wolf, elk, colobus monkey, lynx, river otters (G's favorite) and so on on our way to find M's requested emu. Saw this kookaburra:

And saw a few wallabies hanging out indoors, before finding an emu and another couple wallabies outdoors:

By this point M had expressed a desire to have all the things as pets, including the bears. He also would like to ride on an ostrich or an emu (I told him I have a movie we can watch that will show him how that would go). 

Of course, he wanted to be able to touch the animals, so we made our way to the "family farm" section where we admired the pig, donkeys, cows, and chickens while waiting for the petting area (with goats and sheep) to open. He entered the petting area with several other kids but outlasted all the ones in his group and some in the group that came in after them. Got all the goat and sheep pets in before we left for the day, catching a glimpse of the red panda and the flamingos on our way out - M and I agreed that the flamingos win the smelliest animal award.

It's easy to put off little adventures like this when we're busy with other things, so I was happy we took advantage of our quiet weekend to fit this in for him.