All Creatures Great and Small

 

Mama and Daddy decided that we'd stay the extra day so we could go to the zoo. They figured since we were still in the area, they'd check house listings one last time... and there "just happened" to be another house listed that looked promising. So, we drove by that day, and Mama and Daddy put an offer in for this house as well.

 

It was soooooo much fun taking the little ones to the zoo! Peter had been, but was way too little to remember it. And Josiah and Noah had never been (though, since Noah slept the whole time, I don't know if that even counts ;).)! It was cheaper to just buy a year pass for our family than to pay for each of us, so we've had fun telling everybody that we had a zoo membership before we had a house, haha!

Peter was ESPECIALLY excited to see the giraffes and zebras. It was ALL he talked about looking for until we found them :). We were telling Josiah about some of the animals he would see, and he seemed most interested in the bears beforehand, but once we were inside, it was obvious that his favorites were the monkeys. He kept asking to go back to one until we would find another :). Both the little boys wanted carried constantly... and once we had passed the zebras, Peter lost all motivation! He just laid down in the koala bear house like he was going to take a nap. Both of them were sooooo sweaty and tired within 15 minutes of arriving.... I think living in the cooler climate of Virgina has rather spoiled these two, hahaha!

 

Riverbanks has changed a lot while we've been gone; they've had to move the animals around making room for new ones, so everything is shuffled. They've added otters, and brought the seals back! (And they have a new baby koala. Tell me that doesn't make the entire visit worth it no matter what else you miss.) Not to mention, for me, it was just totally awesome to go to the zoo with my glasses. We didn't know I needed them until a few months after we moved to VA (one of the things I will always remember as a part of our VA experience is going to be finding out how pretty sharp bark lines and clear stars look!). Fur lines. Tiny fish. Meerkat markings. You can see all this stuff, so much better, from so far away, when your vision is up to par. It's beautiful! And though some people I've told that to have told me how sorry they are that that's the first time I've seen it, the truth is, it is so much fun to experience this stuff and know how much to appreciate it. Like, I could have grown up seeing all this stuff perfectly fine, and it would have been fun and all... but the excitement of knowing how it's not to be taken for granted is so much fun!!!

We spent the night chilling in the hotel room, eating chick-fil-a, or chinese food, depending on the person, and talking about all the fun we had had that day. Peter could NOT stop telling his stories over and over and over. Once he was cooled off, I think the trip was well worth it for him, haha :). It was so much fun :).