Zoorassic Park!

Another big outing we had when Karin came to visit was a trip to the Hoogle Zoo!  It's no secret that I just love the zoo!  Since the natural history musuem at the U of U is underconstruction, the zoo decided to have a special dinosaur exhibit at the zoo for the summer.  It consisted of huge dinosaurs, that moved and made noises, placed in various locations throughout their property, needless to say it was pretty darn cool.  Some of the kids were pretty scared of them at first and had a hard time posing in front of them for pictures.  I mist admit they were pretty realistic, I'm sure they would have scared me a little if I was a little kid.

This little trickster of a dionsaur would spray water at you from his mouth! He got some of us pretty good.

Nora is still warming up to the idea of the dinosaurs ...

I think these monkeys are adorable.

This was a good time to come to the zoo becuase a lot of the animals had cute little babies that were too cute to handle, like this cute baby monkey.

We happened across this beautiful owl going out for his morning stroll.  One of his wings is injured so they keep him inside to help him heal and take him outside every once in a while to get some fresh air.

All the animals were out and about and were being so active!  It was my best visit to the zoo EVER! I'm not even exaggerating.  We saw so many animals and they were all doing something other then just sitting there in the furthest corner of their cage which is what they are usually doing when I come to the zoo.

The griffin girls love to go on the courasel whenever they go to the zoo, so we all joined in the fun!  I sat with Evie in the very elegant peacock bench.

The Asian Highlands is my favorite part of the zoo.  It has been redone recently, as in the last ten years or so, and it reall is like being transported away from Utah.  It is also where my favorite animal, tigers, are.  Boy the tigers sure put on a show for us today! 

When we showed up one of them was playing in the water, I never see any of the animals playing in their pools so that was awesome.  Then his friends walked by and refused to get in the water with him and went to the other side of the pool without getting wet.  Well the first tiger wasn't going to have any of that, so we watched as he prepared to pounce on his friend.  Then he leaped out of the water and wrapped his whole body around his freind, soaking his entire coat. hahahahah what a trickster!

Well his buddy wasn't going to let him get away with that so then they started "fighting" and rolling all over their enclosement.  They were roaring so loud it was unbelieveable! Oh it was so fun and exciting to watch!

Then I think it might have gone a little too far because then this one ran to his mother or his sister or something for protection and she liked his head to calm him down and scared the other one away.  Look at the smug little face.

Jenny calls Sammy her little tiger cub, so this was a perfect statue to take a picture by!

One more majestic picture, I just can't get over how neat these cats are!

After our exciting tiger encounter we stopped to have lunch.  All us grown up girls got rice bowls that were really yummy, and since I am still a child in too many ways to count, I wanted my diet coke in a cool souvenir cup, and how cool is that, it is peacock themed!

Jens bought Sammy this cuddly little tiger cub

We forgot Thomas' little hat and since it was so sunny we didn't want his cute little head to get burned so Karin made this wonderful make shift hat for him out of a spare jaket.  Thomas is such a happy baby!

Jenny and Nora have been working on this wonderful summer book.  It is filled with all the fun things that they have done in the summer time.  Jenny had her fill out a couple pages about the zoo before she came.  Under the question, "what animal would you like to see"  Nora drew this amazing picture of a mamma giraffe with her baby.  So, as you might have guessed, we went to see the giraffes next.

I found this sign to be hilarious, espcially since Nora kept asking what does breeding mean ... haha jenny decribed it as they are making little babies, so every giraffe we saw she would ask "is that the one making babies..." hahahahaha we didn't see any giraffes making babies....

I thought this second picture was pretty funny.  Ben is checking out some random little girl, Andrew is still looking good, Evie is playing a trick on John and he has an unreadable reaction to it, will has just taken off and Nora is trying to be good but her smile is fading, but her pose is great.  hahaha love it.

At the end of our 6 hour visit to the zoo I was adventrous and took all the little kids on the train while Karin and Jenny stayed with their babies.  I assigned Andrew and John to be in charge of the Griffin girls and I was in charge of watching Will.  This made this little adventure possible since we had to wait in line for such a long time.  John was Evie's shadow the entire time, which isn't an easy task, she wanders off like it is her job!

What a fun day at Zoorasic Park!