Olyphants

We love to visit baby (now teenage?) Samudra at the Oregon Zoo!  This time he put on quite a show for us, swimming, dancing, and shoving the other elephants around..not to mention trumpeting to his little heart's content!  The girls were enthralled!

Prehistoric Fun!!

Friday was Member Preview Day for the new Prehistoric Predators exhibit at the zoo.  (They had dinosaurs last summer, but this year there were more. Less frightening this year, too, which is a good thing.) We grabbed our boots and umbrellas and braved the rain for some dinosaur fun!  All of the dinosaurs are incredibly realistic- animatronic with sound effects, blinking eyes...and on a few occasions...spit (hence Elora and Joel heading in umbrellas first.  That guy really sprayed!).  When the mist got heavy and loud roars echoed out of it, the girls hollered and ran back towards me....and being the wonderful mother I am I took their picture and laughed at them a little bit before taking them slowly in to to mist to meet the culprit.  Each dino had a placard with its name, pronunciation and interesting tidbits, so it was educational, too!

Spring at the Zoo!

 

Well, We hadn't been to the zoo in just over *gasp* a month, so last weekend we (along with the rest of the Portland Metro Area) packed a picnic and headed off for adventure.  It as the first time we'd been there with the Zoo Train was running again after winter, so we hopped on the caboose and enjoyed a lovely ride! (Seleia and Elora felt quite grown up with a seat to themselves.)  The girls got animal stamps galore, got to play in a little bit of water, and used their zoo keys at every opportunity.  (Elora carried her purse through the zoo all day and kept her zoo map out...consulting it at every exhibit to make sure she knew exactly where we were on the map.  Maps and Calendars have been quite the obsession lately.  A good gift idea for her: Portland area Thomas Guide.)  Amarra strutted her stuff in a pair of my shades since her sunglasses were temporarily MIA.  Seleia made about 50 new friends.  After a few hours of animals we headed down into Washington Park for a picnic and some time at the playground. (The only playground I know that even beats the ones in Central Park.  We were jipped as kids...wood, metal, and bark dust.  Ha!)   I quite officially am ready for SUMMER!  The sunny trip to the zoo did it.  Bring on the sun!