A Day at the Zoo

Grandma (my mom) is visiting/helping this week while Chris is on a mission trip with the high schoolers.  So, we took a day trip to the zoo since I didn't have to work today.  It was a great day today!  There was hardly any humidity...a rareity here in the midwest...and the animals were all out and playful...including my own.  

This Milwaukee Zoo recently got a baby orangatan named Mahal.  He is adorable.  He's got kind of a rough story of how he got here, but we are just glad he's here and bonding with his surrogate mom.

This elephant is named Ruth.  Our zoo has two females...Ruth and Brittany...interesting names for elephants
A giraffe's tongue is approximately 18 inches long.  This was quite a site to see, watching this giraffe reach up to the branches with this REALLY long tongue.  Then Noah tried, unfortunately, I did not get a picture of this. 

Our polar bears are fun to watch.  This one was in the "superman" position just before jumping into the water...

Fairly certain that I would never want a picture taken of me like this, but it was hilarious to watch the polar bear try to get herself under the water.  Polar bears have around 4 inches of blubber on the bodies so they are VERY buoyant.

I wish that I would have been able to see the rhino when I was in Africa, but alas the zoo will have to do...and this was pretty close.  Probably much closer than I would have been able to get in the African lands.

They have a Family Farm at the zoo.  Today we got to see a cow in labor...we didn't stay for much of that.  I figured the boys might be scarred for life at seeing a cow deliver a calf.  So instead of a birth, we just got ice cream.  Here's a picture of Grandma and Noah.

My boys loving their treat...Noah got rainbow sherbet and Micah got he old standby of chocolate chip cookie dough...that's my boys!