Pueblo Zoo

Although Patrick still gets a bit sad that we live here now (he misses his "Colorado Tho-ton" home) his pain is eased by the balm of the Pueblo Zoo.  We already bought a family pass and have used it twice, the second opportunity being when we will be MOST likely to use it: to escape the house after Joe has worked the previous night.  So we went on Monday after he worked his 1st night shift Sunday night and spend THREE HOURS there.  I would guess there are about 2 hours-worth of things to see there, so that was quite the excursion!  And I STILL had to drag the kids (in the wagon, so it wasn't as bad as dragging them by their toes or something) out of there.  Here I tried valiantly to get them all in one shot:

And technically, they ARE all in one shot.  Win? 

Eli captured child-like awe. 

He was looking at this parrot

 Patrick just likes me to take pictures of him.  If I whip out the camera in ANY direction he smiles "CHEESE!"

Immediately the boys wanted to see the penguins, their favorite exhibit from visit #1.  STILL a favorite exhibit because of this penguin here who is a total show-off.  

Kids love him. 

 I love him.   

 It looked like he and Caroline were synchronized

The boys' 2nd favorite exhibit was the lions.  They weren't out last time, but this visit the mom lion was right on top of pride rock!  Okay, they didn't name it pride rock, IIIII named it pride rock and started singing "The circle of life" and embarrassing all other visitors away from the lions so we could have them to ourselves.  Worked like a charm :)

Pretty sure Caroline got distracted from the lions by a squirrel.  Such is the zoo for little ones.

Caroline randomly wandered over and gave Patrick a big hug.  He obliged - gotta get a record of this before he gets too old and "cool" for little sisters.

Cool little play area - Patrick was, appropriately, wearing Spider man sunglasses.

Eli climbs up to the top of any climbing thing, declares "look how big I climbed!" then climbs back down and does it again. The kiddos never wanted to leave this park-within-a-zoo, but I kept dragging them.

MY favorite exhibit was the ring-tailed lemurs.  Last time the zookeeper had this itsy-bitsy baby lemur in a cage, brought in on the back of... a stuffed animal sloth!  I think they were just introducing the newborn to the environment, it was so dang tiny!  And while the baby clung for dear life to the stuffed animal, the sloth tipped over on its back onto the baby, and still it hung on!  It was hilarious.  This time it was interesting to see it had graduated from stuffed mom to real mom and they were jumping all over the cage together, even while the baby nursed.  Dang, I'm not 1/10th that agile while I'm nursing! Makes me seem like a lazy bum that I congratulate myself for being able to get a drink from the fridge or eat a sandwich with a baby attached to me. 

 Anyway, it was a great morning!  Joe working nights has seemed great, too - I stay up way to late while he works (I've finally stared in on knitting that baby blanket I mentioned while I watch my netflix) and then we (me, Caroline, Eli, and Joe) all nap in the afternoon while Patrick watches a movie.  I'd say it's pretty much "the life," just like my niece and nephew are living over in GJ :)