Zoo

The kids and I went to the little zoo today, and we had a lovely time. I've been wanting to take them for some time now, and today it was finally nice enough to actually do it, so we did it.

We stopped first to see the "mingos." If you get a chance sometime, ask Sophie why flamingos are pink. She knows. She explained it all rather succinctly to Greg last night.

It was such a beautiful day that we had lunch outside--our first outdoor picnic of the season! While Sophie and I ate her "cheese-hamurmer" Owen played under our table. Mostly with my shoelaces. Since learning to crawl and pull himself up on things, he refuses to just sit on my lap anymore (unless he's eating!). So I held onto him with one hand and tried to eat with the other.

After lunch, we headed inside to check out the conservatory, which we'd not done before. There were a few ponds with fish in them, which Sophie was totally fascinated with. She even got down close to stick her fingers in the water of one of them. Owen would have actually crawled right into the pond if I'd let him, so I only had a few seconds to try to get a picture of him enjoying the water too.

My favorite thing to look at were all the beautiful flowers. Sophie refused to pose alone or with her brother, so I had to trick her into smelling the flowers just to get a picture of her by the colorful blooms. Owen would have happily sat by the flowers for me, however, whenever I placed him near them, he immediately was grabbing handfuls of dirt or trying to rip the petals off! In the picture below, he is straining to grab them while my hand, just out of the picture, is holding his other hand to keep him from actually succeeding.