zippity ZOO dah

My oh my what a wonderful Saturday we had.......
We started out by sleeping in until almost 9am! Andy and I had a late night out on Friday with the other couples from his KFD shift. FUN times.

Anyway, we slept in and before talking with the girls we KNEW we needed to make it a day of F-A-M-I-L-Y time. It has been way too long since we had a whole day with all 5 of us present.
We brought the girls into our room, first making them do some really goofy things (which surprisingly they did without question) and then told them we we going to the ZOO!

We hadn't been to the KC Zoo since Tess was Jane's age, and our girls love love love animals..... (not to mention that we'd heard about the new polar bear exhibit on television and polar bears just happen to be my favorite animal) so we packed the car with snacks and sunscreen and headed south.

The zoo went above my expectations(no comparison to the Omaha Zoo, but more do-able for spur of the moment fun) and we all had a great time. The polar bear, Nikita, was fun to watch as she dove into the water after treats that were thrown to her from the zoo keepers. Jane was so excited to see monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions, and elephants. Her shouts of "yook! it's a ______!" were so cute. She walked for most of the zoo, but would ride through some of the longer animal-less areas. We were all about to wilt by the time we got through Africa.....that part of the zoo is the biggest bummer spatially. Large areas of nothing......but still had cool animals. Just too far between them. The Kid Zone Discovery Barn totally rocked. And not just because it was air conditioned.

Jane says the polar bear was her favorite, Tess said the Discovery Barn, and Kate said everything was her favorite. I heart family time.