Hogle Zoo

All summer long we've been wanting to go to the zoo, but Jared had to work most Saturdays and when we finally set a day to go, it was raining or we couldn't go for some other reason.

My friend had a coupon for Buy 1 adult pass Get 1 free kid pass. I thought September is the perfect month to go to the zoo! And I needed to do some walking anyway to see if I could help this labor come some time soon. So I asked Grandma Lisa if she'd like to come and we went!

The boys loved it. They didn't care too much to see the animals, but it was fun to go from one exhibit to the next and just be outside of the house.

Our first stop was the monkeys. Ryan was WAY more interested in the map and getting from here to there than actually looking at the animals. Although there was a gorilla hanging out in front of the glass that they thought was cool. It was kind of creepy because it wasn't moving. lol. We also didn't get to see any orangutans. They were hiding.

 

  

Silly Grandma Lisa! :)

Ryan wanted to find the snakes on the map, they were quite a ways so we had to talk him into stopping at some of the exhibits on the way. We stopped by the elephants and the rhinos. He saw one peek and was ready to go!

This metal elephant made noise (I think in the summer it sprays mist too), and that made the boys a little nervous! Brady did NOT want to sit on the trunk. :) This is his mad face and his hands go up too. I love it.

Let's GO!!

While we are looking at the rhinos, this is what Ryan did. :)

They perch the birds out in the late morning so we got to see some owls and hawks and an eagle. Ryan thought it was cool. Then he asked the lady how to get to the snakes. :)

Lunch time!

We finally made it to the reptiles and small animals building! Ryan thought the crocodile was cool. Brady loved looking at all the different animals.

These monkeys moved around a lot, jumping and swinging. They loved it!

We saw a few snakes in the small animal building, but Ryan wasn't too happy with them. He wanted to see a huge one shaking it's rattle. :) We only saw them sleeping and they were quite small. After the small animal building we made our way over to the cats.

The Tiger was moving around a lot! We got a lot of good looks at it. When we were walking up the hill behind the exhibit we saw it walking back and forth along the gate. We were super close!

 

The boys loved playing on the metal animals. Brady could've played there all day!

 

 

The famous Lion Drinking Fountain! I heard a lady say "I remember this lion from when I was a little girl!" Then about 5 seconds later Mom said, "I remember this drinking fountain from when I was a little girl." It's been around for a long long time!

We made our way down to the giraffes. On the way Ryan wanted to play with Grandma's camera. So you will see him pretty much attached to it the rest of the pictures. I'll show some of his pictures too. He was so cute.

Ryan's picture

 

 

Some more of Ryan's pictures.

 

 

  

After the giraffes we crossed the bridge, because Ryan wanted to, and found the bears and sea lions and penguins.

 

My cute bears!

I love Brady's smile! I had to put it in here. :)

We took a break from seeing the animals and played at the new splash pad they have there. The boys just played on the slide the entire time. Ryan came down every which way, but mostly he loved coming down head first. So brave! Brady loved it, but would only do it with Grandma. Grandma is a great sport! She must've went down with him at least 10 times. I would've been done with two. :)

 

One of the bathrooms Grandma went in had a little sink. Brady loved it!

 

We walked by the carousel and Grandma bought tickets for the boys. They were so excited!! Ryan picked the peacock to ride in. We tried to convince them to go on other animals, but they wanted this one. Since I love to sit, I was okay with that. :)

On our way back to the front we stopped by the elephants again since they were walking around a lot more.

Then we let the kids play at the ball for about two minutes.

 

We had so much fun! The kids loved it, and I loved spending some quality time with my boys before baby sister gets here. I love them so much!

Here are a bunch of videos from our day.

Playing on the metal cats.


The tiger walking along the fence. I didn't even zoom in!


The momma giraffe doing some training.


The sea lions swimming. So cool!


The boys playing in the log. So cute!


On the carousel.


And then playing with the black water ball thing at the end of our trip. I love how Brady does everything Ryan does. :)