Monkey Business

Sloan has taken a Stay-cation for the past few days. (Otherwise known as the "fiscal year is almost up and you've got some extra vacation days to take" vacation.) So we've made full use of his Father's Daycation going to the zoo, out to dinner, and to the pool. (It seems my declaring Mother's Days a weekend event has come back to bite me in the tail.) As I type this on Saturday morning it is 9:30am and the King is still asleep. (When is it my weekend again?)

The Richmond Zoo is a little ghetto. Well, they have lots of animals and Henry loved it, but NC has a great zoo and Sloan grew up near Philly, which has the oldest and one of the most beloved zoos in the country. We have been spoiled. There are lots of chain linked fences at the Richmond Metro Zoo, but you do get to get very close to the animals, ride a train through the animal yards, a ski lift over the animals, and even get to feed a few giraffes. Henry loved it and we upgraded our day passes to season passes since it is only 15 minutes from our house.

Feeding the giraffes.

Is it just me, or this photo a little obscene? What's grosser than gross it that this giant black tongue touched me on several occasions.

And oh yeah, the giraffe almost ate my kid. Which Henry thought was absolutely fantastic.

We told Henry we were going to take him on a train ride at the Zoo. But we were talking about the tram whose car that pulls it looks like a train and does, in fact, have a train whistle. A ride aptly named the Safari Train because it actually takes you through the Asian and African yards so you can see the gazelles and various other horned beasts up close. But Henry climbed up on this. Having no quarters (having cleaned out my purse for the ice cream truck jar), I had to honestly tell him, "Sorry, honey, Mommy doesn't have anything less than a fifty."

Feeding the Baas.Finally, on the train. Where Henry pointed to all the beasts and bleated "Baa" as unknown animals have apparently moved from the dog category to the sheep category (or maybe goat?). Between bleatings, he also provided the train with very accurate train sounds--Choo! Choo! Peep! Peep! Poop! Poop!