Mom's Visit! A Trip to the Zoo

Mom came out and visited us for ten days, and we had an AWESOME time with her! Each day we did something fun and exciting, and on one day (a day when Brad could be with us), we went to the San Diego Zoo! We all had fun, and I thought I'd share some pictures with you from that day...

Here's Mom with the kids on the day after she arrived, right before we all headed to church

Our cousin Danielle had given December some clothes, and Mom had brought them out for her, so here's December in some of Danielle's clothes, right before we left for the zoo.

Isaac at the zoo, being mesmerized by the fish

Mr. Crocodile. They hold so still that they look fake!

A beautiful flowering tree

A waterfall in one of the bird atriums

This was cool. This is in San Diego Zoo's new Elephant Odyssey exhibit, and what Brad, December, and Mom are looking at is this pool-like thing that water alternately fills up and drains away. There are some animal skeletons (I presume fake ones) of now-extinct animals (like a saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth, etc) at the bottom of the pool that are entrenched in mud. I guess San Diego used to have some sand pits that animals would get stuck in -- and their remains would get very well-preserved in them. So it's a demonstration of that.

December loved this pool, although she didn't understand it at first. She didn't know why they animals were stuck in the mud at the bottom, so I explained to her that they fell into the sand pit because they didn't listen to their mommies when their mommies told them to stay away from sand pits. For the rest of the trip to the zoo, December kept begging to go back to this pool, saying, "I want to see where the animals didn't listen to their mommies again! Why didn't they listen, Mommy?"

Llamas and capybaras (the largest rodents in the world). So yes, it's true -- ROUS's really exist!

The elephant care center. The cages are enormous!

A life-size replica(!) of a now-extinct bird. Can you imagine a bird of this size wandering around your backyard?!? I think it could've carried small children away and ate them for lunch!

A red panda. His little face was so cute!

Here we are waiting for the sea lion show to start.

The sea lion show. It's alot of fun to watch! They do some fun tricks.

Pretty good balance!

The sea lion show must have really worn Isaac out, because he fell asleep shortly afterward while we walked around.

Mom and December in the children's part of the zoo.

Haha! December was barely tall enough to stick her head in this one!

A parrot that just sits in the open air in this part of the children's area.

December next to a cute little house (you couldn't go inside, though, which upset December)

Good morning, Isaac! This was right after he woke up. Brad is taking some pictures of beautiful hibiscus flowers. The picture that follows is what he was taking.

And Mom took a picture of this one with her camera. Beautiful!

You can see in the backround Mom taking some pictures of December. And what follows here is what she was taking...

I like this one of December.

So these were just our pictures from the zoo. I'll put up more next time about the rest of Mom's trip...