Zoo Day

Today the kids didn't have school and so my sister took her flex day at work to join us at the zoo. All summer long in Lethbridge we had been driving by the billboard on Scenic drive telling us that the penguins were at the zoo and they were waiting for us to come and visit them. We were excited to go and check out the new exhibit and see what all the fuss was about. We had a lot of fun watching the penguins jump, dive and swim in groups. The kids loved finding the different types of penguins they had just seen in the movie Happy Feet and pointing out every time one of the penguins would dive into the water. There was a group of three buddies that followed one another in a line along the edge of the water until the end, dive in one after the other and swim to the other side where they would get out and start again.

Once we were finished with the penguins we had to map our where we wanted to go from there. Madison seemed pretty set on checking out the zebra's and cheetah's, while Brayden and Sydney took their time studying the map to figure out which direction to take. We made our way to Africa first and walked through the misty jungle to find the gorillas. I love watching them and the way they interact with one another. We caught them at breakfast and watched them pick away at their broccoli. Some of them were playing around swinging on the ropes but for the most part they were watching the people as if we were the ones on display. The kids weren't as impressed as I was so we moved on only after a minute or two.

It was a busy day running from animal to animal only stopping for lunch. We saw everything there was to see except for the Hippo. I guess one of the Hippo's died recently and they were getting a new one next week from Quebec and until them the solo hippo was off display. I love the hippo's so that kind of sucked but I guess it will save something for next time. We learned about the pregnant elephant who will have a 2000lbs baby in March and saw the not so tiny tiger cubs hanging out with their mama. We were able to find some zebra's after some hard searching but sadly for Madison there were no cheetah's. She seemed to get over it when we found the snow leopard and found herself a new favorite animal for the day. At the end of our zoo day we went back to Kaits house so Brayden could get his first guitar lesson from Matthew. It was such a long day on our feet I was so impressed by the kids and how they handled it without any whining. It was home, dinner and off to bed so they would get enough rest for their first day at their new school!