Today we took Adam to the Woodland Park Zoo. It was a fabulous zoo-- the pathways were camouflaged by lush vegetation, there were markers in the native languages of the country they represented, and they had as much personal contact with the animals as possible. For example, there was this one HUGE, scary looking spider in the bug house that did not have glass! And many of the animals were caged only by a low fence.
One of the coolest parts of the zoo was the brown bear pen. There were tons of live trout swimming around in their river! Apparently, they let the bears catch their own meals!
*We also wanted to note that Adam thinks all animals, including monkeys and elk, go "rar!"*

Throughout the zoo, there were tons of bronze statues of animals with which to take pictures, so we did. The rest of the animals were pretty far away, so they didn't photograph well. That, and long about the lion exhibit, Adam went to sleep. Margaret did get to see a bunch of giraffes close-up, which really made her day. And Steve saw chickens from a distance but decided they were too common of an animal to take a picture with, when there were things like sleeping jaguars and wallaroos around.
Overall, we had a great time. The weather was perfect-- overcast, breezy, slight sprinkles at times. It wasn't too crowded, and we got to see all the animals. Adam really enjoyed his first trip to the zoo, even thought it wasn't as exciting as the aquarium since the animals were farther away. He mostly enjoyed being carried around outside by his daddy.

You can tell in this last one that he's getting sleepy!

On a personal note, yes we DID go to Costco and break down and buy the last Harry Potter even though we're not collecting the hardbacks. We'll let you know what we think (without spoiling anything!). And THANK YOU to all who comment on our blog. It makes Margaret feel better about her obsession with it. :)