Zoo trip with cousins

We went to our dinky little zoo with a couple of cousins that week after Christmas. Levi wouldn't get in the picture. He was too busy looking at the turkeys.

I kept telling him not to get too close, but the next thing I knew he was screaming. Apparently the turkey bit his face!

I didn't take too many pictures of animals this time, since they were all too far away for my lens, but this monkey was nice and close.

Jacob got a camera for Christmas, so we were both snapping pictures.

This picture of Peter cracks me up!

Talking to the birds.

After the zoo we ate donuts and played at the park. Then they wandered over to the lake and found a totally cool bridge to play under.

The lighting was awesome under there.

Then someone gave us some bread to feed the ducks and geese. They came close, but luckily they didn't bite us.

It's practically impossible to keep 7 boys out of water, but we managed to stay relatively dry.

I love the rustic grey background in these pictures. It was hard to leave, and we ended up being there a lot longer than I planned. It was a fun day.

Summer sledding

There is a little astroturf hill in the center of the Santa Barbara Zoo that is made for sliding down on cardboard. I have no idea what it has to do with animals, but it's one of my boys' favorite things there. We had a few minutes to wait for the dinosaur show, so they all went down a bunch of times.

Meditation sledding.

We even saw people bringing their own huge pieces of cardboard into the zoo for this. It's quite popular.

The sledding was too scary for Levi. He had more fun playing in dino eggs.

Santa Barbara Zoo

We went to the Santa Barbara Zoo a couple weeks ago. We bought a membership to our little local zoo, which only cost $50, but it gets us into lots of other zoos for free. Otherwise it would have cost us $64 for one day. It's a pretty sweet deal.

We were trying to decide between Fresno and Santa Barbara (which are both about 2 hours away), so we checked the weather forecast: 99 degrees in Fresno and 75 in Santa Barbara. That made the decision easy.

Levi loves animals right now, so we were excited to take him there.

The elephants are my favorite.

And the lions. Levi has been roaring like a lion ever since.

We even remembered binoculars. Go us! But one thing I love about this zoo is that the animals are all nice and close.

Obviously there is no resemblance between my sweet little boys and those primates.

Then again...

A couple of bald eagles. Very majestic.

The California condor, an endangered species that is hideously ugly.

But it has a huge wingspan, so I guess that makes it kinda cool.

We happened to go on Vulture Day, so there were stations set up throughout the zoo with docents teaching us about the various kinds of vultures. Brennan is demonstrating the actual size of the California condor wings.

The weather was fabulous - overcast and cool when we first got there and then warming up enough to take off sweatshirts after lunch. As my sister Jen once said, bad weather is against city ordinance in Santa Barbara.



We also happened to be there during their dinosaur show, which was actually pretty funny and entertaining.

Duncan the dinosaur walked around the stage and roared, which scared Levi at first. It even pooped on the stage - right in front of my boys. Of course this was a huge hit. They laughed about it forever.

See, I was there too.

This leopard had his head down for the longest time, but then he finally looked up for a quick picture.

This picture cracks me up! Levi is smelling the flower.

Another great smelling-the-flower picture. Too cute.

Tyler LOVES taking pictures. He thanks me all the time for the camera we gave him for his birthday.

See that red train in the background? We didn't do that this time. The lines are always super long, and the prices have gone up. Totally not worth it.

I'm thinking about printing out a bunch of the animal pictures and making a little book for Levi. He loves looking at them.

Okay, I'm done now. It was hard to narrow down all my pictures - I took a couple hundred. Going to the zoo is way more interesting for me when I am taking pictures.