ZOO x 2 = WOOHOO!

Our family loves the zoo and within the past two weeks we were able to go to two different ones! The last day we were home before our trip to AZ, we took the day to visit our local zoo. Daddy took the day off and went with us since he wasn't going to AZ with us and wouldn't see us for several days. We also had many of our playgroup friends there with us so we had lots of fun with everyone!

I think the chimpanzees are by far the favorite. That particular day the chimps were VERY active. They truly put on a show for everyone!

Three little friends watching the elephants...

Sweet little group of friends...

...and again...

...and one more time!

When we got to Arizona we worked hard day after day helping my mom unload, unpack and organize. On our last full day there she wanted to treat us to a day of fun so we went to the Phoenix zoo. It was absolutely beautiful. I can't even begin to describe the beauty of the scenery, and although these pictures don't quite do it justice, it will give you an idea.

Just a small portion of the entrance

Vibrant desert flowers

Papa and the girls pose with all the trees

I love this picture. If you look closely you can see desert rocks, mountains, palm trees and cactus all in one view.

Desert scenes

This plant is actually a cactus, but it looks like a miniature palm tree

My beautiful little flowers in front of the pretty desert flowers

This picture pose was their idea

HUGE tree trunk

They had a lot of really neat kid play areas and statues for the kids to play on. Here's my little joeys :-)

Cactus slide

Elephant cradle

Zora's coming out of her shell

My two beautiful little pearls

Zora practices tractor driving

The girls practice cow milking. I think we might need a farm :-)

We really did see animals while we were there, too! They have animals at their zoo that we don't usually get to see because our zoo doesn't have them. Here are some of our favorites.

Koala Bear

Petting zoo...couldn't pass that one up!

Free roaming peacocks

Cheetah

Top Dog
This was an animal I had never heard of... it is native to Africa.
It looks kind of like a cross between a hyena and a dog.

Baboons. This one was hilarious. It looked much older than all the others and it had a crimped fro. It seriously looked like someone had spent hours crimping it's hair. None of the other baboons had that much hair and all of them had straight hair.

Mandrills - such interesting and unusual animals. They almost don't even look real. Their fur is rainbow colored in the back and their faces are such vibrantly colored it looks like they are wearing a plastic mask. We sat and watched them for quite some time.

The male lion apparently didn't like us... he stuck out his tongue :-)

At the exit of the zoo there was this beautiful little pond with brightly colored fish. The girls enjoyed watching them.

Family pose!
Papa, Me, Nana, Zora, Lily