It's a Zoo Around Here

Y'all might know that we have a lot of small children here in Texas.  The other night at church I realized that of fifty-two people in attendance, twenty-two were children aged six and under (granted, a few of the little ones belonged to visiting families and won't be here much longer).  Since we keep our little ones in church with us for the most part, only taking them out if absolutely necessary, most of those twenty-two were in the service with us.  But on the whole, the service was very quiet, as usual--not a zoo at all!  

Yes, I'm getting to the zoo part.  On Friday, a group of friends went to the actual zoo, near the medical center in Houston.  The boys go to the zoo frequently with their dad, who has a zoo membership, but I've only been once; but that morning, the ex kindly called the zoo and added me to his membership, so that I could go myself, and join our friends when they went.

It was a beautiful warm and sunny day, and we enjoyed ourselves greatly.

My sister was there with her two daughters.  Olivia (her oldest) was out well past her naptime and you could tell that she was tired, but she stayed reasonably cheerful and only cried once, at the end of our outing, when she had to part ways with her beloved aunt. Yes, that would be me. :D

And Charlotte (my sister's youngest) spent most of the afternoon napping in the Moby wrap.

Leah (my sister-in-law) also had her youngest in a carrier.  Brooklyn is such a smiley baby!  I'm disappointed that I didn't get a picture of her lovely smile.  You will have to settle for a picture of her lovely chubby cheeks.

 

Brooklyn again, this time with Mrs. Anna (Leah's stepmother).  That's Clement (Rachel's youngest) in the green shirt.

Noah was a happy boy.  Elijah, on the other hand, was a bit sulky because we didn't do the activities he wanted to do as quickly as he wanted to do them.  Must work on his attitude...

Noah in the tunnel by the prairie dog exhibit.

Brown pelicans.  We see pelicans when we go to the beach--I love watching them skim the waves, scooping out fish.

Giraffes.

White rhino in the new African Forest exhibit.

Benjamin (Rachel's second oldest) in the petting zoo area.

 

It's hard to take pictures through glass, but I thought this one was pretty neat.  We have a book about otters that the boys really like, so they were thrilled to see some real live otters.

Lastly we stopped at the aquarium.  By the time we'd seen everything else, we were getting pretty tired, so the cool and dark of the aquarium was quite welcome. 

These are piranhas.

Jellyfish of some sort. 

I think that's probably the most pictures I've ever put into one post!  If you haven't had your fill of pictures yet, you can see more on Rachel's blog--from the zoo and elsewhere too.