Everyone Has Kids in Utah...Even At the Zoo!

It was such a glorious day and with Andy out of town this week, we decided to spend the afternoon at the zoo.  I had heard on the news that they had a baby elephant just recently so I figured now is as good a time as any.  The bonus was that my Jax Zoo membership got us in for 50% off!  Score!

We got there and the first thing Riley saw was the playground, go figure.  I told him that would have to wait until the end.  We got to see so many animals.  They had some different animals than the Jax zoo, like penguins, tigers, snow leopards, horned sheep, orangutans, meerkats, red pandas, lynx, crocodiles, as well as number of smaller cats and reptiles.  I missed seeing the jaguars and otters.  Those are still my favorites from Jax.

Not only did the elephant have a baby, but the giraffe and the tiger too!  Very fertile area, huh?  Must be in the water...good thing for Andy that I've been drinking a lot of bottled water!  Ha!

Riley was thrilled that they had a cheetah exhibit.  The cheetah was out and on the prowl when we got there.  He was beside himself with excitement.  For those of you who don't understand, Riley pretends to be a cheetah about 95% of the time.  He hunts prey - usually a stuffed animal, Penton, or his sister, walks on all 4's, only wants to eat meat at dinner, you name it!  The kid is a trip!

We even took a picture of the tiger for Daddy and emailed it to him...Daddy's a big tiger fan.  Kendall had fun walking around the indoor exhibit that contained the meerkats, black swans, small cats, etc.  She could see most of them from her height and thought it was great.  The down side of her being out of her stroller was that she tried to kiss all of the animals through the glass - you know me the germ freak!  AAAHH!

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from today:

Brand new baby elephant...this one's for you Beth!

I love how you can see exactly how small the calf is compared it's momma!

There's my baby!

These guys were too cute.  The giraffe exhibit was pretty cool - you couldn't feed them like you can in Jax, but you can walk into their giraffe house and watch them eat.  Kendall loved being that close to them.

This is the baby giraffe.  It was solo so it's hard to compare it's size to another giraffe, but sooo cute!

It's Riley!

Riley was pretending to roar at the leopard and I told him he was lucky the glass was in between them or he'd have been a snack!  I know the picture is awful, but I took it to show just how close we were able to get to the leopard.  Such a beautiful animal.

Look!  One of the monkeys escaped!

Riley thought it was fun riding on the rhino.

All in all, we had a fantastic day together.  Can't wait to see what else Utah has to offer.  Riley thinks that "Utah is the best place to live ever because they have so many neat kid things."  So far, he's right!  As soon as I get my backpack for Kendall, we'll be heading to the mts. for some hiking.  He's been bugging to do that since we got here.  He did some hiking at Grandfather Mt. in NC and fell in love with it.  Thank goodness he likes it because otherwise he'd be miserable with all the hiking we plan to do while out here!