Lions & Tigers & Bears...

Since the weather has just been absolutely perfect, Derek, Ashlyn and I decided to meet my brother and niece at the Phoenix Zoo. This was Ashlyn's second time visiting since she was born.
The first time we were there was for Madison's 1st Birthday (Ashlyn was 5 weeks old). Needless to say we didn't stay very long to sight see.

Last Sunday we battled the weekend crowds but I was glad we did. Watching Ashlyn during the whole experience was entertaining enough for me.

Our first stop at the Zoo was the Elephant exhibit. Just so happens my brother is a frequent visitor to the zoo and knows all the back ways to the exhibits. so we didn't have to fight the main crowd. Because of this we were able to see the elephants up close and personal. Ashlyn was very excited too!


Of course at every animal we visited I had to make sure either Derek or I had the camera out and ready to capture the moments of Ashlyn observing the animals for the first time. She did a lot of waving hello and bye-bye, then she just watched Madi or the other kids that were around. She is such a social bug! Loves other kids and people. Didn't really care too much about the animals.



However Ashlyn did enjoy watching the baby orangutan. The baby was doing some break dancing/spinning on his back. It was so funny. Ashlyn giggled at that. She even enjoyed watching the baby play with the leaves and climb up and down the ladders.




Of course I had to make time to pose for a family picture. (this was the exact same spot we took our first family picture. We will have to make this a tradition every time we go to the zoo.) We even were blessed with Madi's presence in one picture. Then she decided she would rather stand by her daddy.




The rest of our adventure lead us to many more exhibits such as the wolves, bears, exotic fish, desert tortoises, giraffes, zebras, monkey village and the petting zoo.

There was a funny story about the petting zoo I wanted to share.
First I want to tell you that Ashlyn loves our dogs and any other dogs for that matter. Every where was go she is very enthusiastic about playing, aka pulling and hitting the poor animals. So here I thought Ashlyn would absolutely love the goats. We walked into the petting zoo area and I have to tell you Ashlyn had her death grip on my arm. She wanted nothing to do with the animals. She didn't cry or scream or throw a fit, She just stood there frozen like a statue. Then there was Madi, who doesn't live with dogs and hates it when they lick her face, running around, hugging, petting, and kissing the goats. Ashlyn was very content just watching Madi running around the place. But after a little while I was able to get her to at least touch one of them. Then it was off to wash our hands!



We only ventured through half the zoo, but we are now official Phoenix Zoo members, for the next year anyway, so we will have to explore the other half sometime soon.

Here are some more pictures that I thought were worthy to post!