Put me in the zoo

As I have said many times in the past, I love the Saint Louis Zoo. Mostly, I love that it is free, and we feel we can take Isidora as many times as we want without worrying about the cost. This afternoon, we took Isidora to the zoo and Katee was nice enough to come with us.

We had a really great time and Isidora had lots of fun seeing the animals. I think she is starting to better understand what is going on, as well as to better recognize the animals.

Anyway, here are a few pictures we took while we were there.

Sitting with Auntie Katee

Family picture in front of the tulips.

Hitching a ride on Auntie Katee's shoulders.

Checking out the elephant.

Saying hi to more elephants.

As for the house inspection - everything went well. The inspector did not find anything that was really bad (no termites, etc), but he did find a lot of small things that needed to be fixed. We will see what happens next!

Aunt Becky's Spring Break Beck-stravaganza!

Bree's youngest sister Becky was able to come visit St. Louis for about a week during her Spring Break. Becky doesn't get to see Isidora very often, so it has been a lot of fun to have her around. Also, having an extra person who enjoys paying attention to Izzie and is willing to go chasing after her is always a plus. We were able to do some fun stuff while she was here, including a visit to the zoo, seeing the City Museum, the Arch, Match day, and just hanging around.
Before you ask, yes, we did document her visit with pictures. What do you think we've been doing with our time, drawing sketches?

Izzie and Becky watching the hippos at the St. Louis Zoo. I think the Hippo enclosure might be one of the best parts of the whole zoo now.

Another place we went to was the City Museum, another cool site to see in St. Louis. It's basically an old building downtown that has been filled with crazy stuff. And by crazy stuff I mean fake caves, treehouses, airplanes, stone towers, architectural edifices and heavy machinery, etc. It's kind of weird and very very cool.

Izzie and Becky playing in the ball pit.

Funny face.

Write your own caption for this one.

Wheeeeeee!

There's that tower I mentioned. And you can see part of one of the airplanes in this picture. There are two.

Nooo don't throw me in the dungeon!


View on the balcony of the tower.

This place is like a Hieronymous Bosch painting or something.


Does this seem sinister to anyone else? Just kinda strolling along unwittingly towards a dark and mysterious fantasy land of doom? Luckily we all survived.

"Stole your cell phone? I don't know what you're talking about... yes, I do have lots of Steubenville people in my phonebook, what of it???"
Awwww.

Saint Louis Zoo

Lately, it has been warming up quite nicely in St. Louis. Yesterday, it actually got up into the 50s! As such, we decided to go to the Saint Louis Zoo. One really nice thing about the zoo in St. Louis is that it is free! Another nice thing is that we live 5 minutes away from the zoo, as it is located in Forest Park. Isidora has already been there 4 or 5 times, and with all my upcoming time off, I'm pretty sure we will be going there a lot in the coming months - at least until it gets too hot to go.

Growing up in Oregon, I have pretty high expectations for zoos, as ours was really neat and had lots of enclosures that were more "modern," I guess - i.e. fewer cage-looking things, and a lot more open areas that simulate natural environments. The Oregon zoo is also pretty spread out and has a neat variety of animals, including a section on Northwest animals, with cougars, eagles, black bears, elk and wolves. Unfortunately, they closed my favorite exhibit, the Alaskan Tundra (where they had musk oxen, caribou, owls and wolves) to open a new exhibit called Predators of the Serengeti. At least they will have lions there again.

Little did I know, the St. Louis zoo is larger (90 acres vs 64 acres), has more animals (22,805 vs 2200), and more variety (810 species vs 260 species) than the Oregon Zoo. And, I must say, I really like the St. Louis Zoo. Not to mention (again), it is free! My favorite thing at the St. Louis zoo is the penguin enclosure, where you can practically reach out and touch the penguins - much better than the one in Oregon, which is all behind glass.

These are from October, when Katee and I took Isidora to the zoo. Here you can see how close the penguins are, that thing on the bottom right corner is the glass at the edge of the enclosure.

Here is Katee pointing out the penguins through the glass to Isidora. It really is amazing how close you get!

So, enough of the explanation, and back to our visit yesterday! Here are some pictures!

Isidora really liked watching the orangutans. They were jumping around a lot and were really fun to watch.

Outside of the ape exhibit there is this giant gorilla - aka obligatory photo stop for all passers-by.

Izzie liked looking at the fish in the hippo enclosure, but wasn't too interested in this hippos that swim by right up against the glass. Oh well.

We had a great time!