Sand, Giraffee's & the Zoo

The Zoo is always fun, but we have the mind set of the Zoo being a partial day thing. I can remember as a kid my parents would pack things up when we left St. Charles to drive ALL THE WAY TO THE ZOO! Snacks, drinks, etc. We would spent hours there and wander from the stinky monkey house to the Gazelle exhibit where we would always be posed in front of the sign by my father. If he were doing it today that would most likely be the represented family picture in the Christmas card - hey, there's an idea for a Christmas card........hmmmmmm.......check your mail boxes in December. Anyway, due to our "quickie" mentality for the Zoo it is sometimes hard now to go and try to see everything. In fact, I heard our friends who were with us say several times "you can see that when we drive by everyday" or "we can see that next time". It was hard to push them around to see the things we can't see - heck it was hard to push ourselves around because we aren't used to spending that much time at the Zoo - so we let our friends go home and we kept doing the Zoo with Granma R. We had lunch there, we shopped at Build A Bear there, we saw the Bird House (it was so cold in there it was beautiful!), we even took the time to give info for a survey. We spent about 5 hours in total there. Long time compared to our old patterns, but well worth the effort (and by the end it was an effort). We avoided the stinky monkey house and the lizard house (those creep me out) - we didn't even see the elephants or hippo's (which we love) and still we filled up 5 hours!! Sheesh. Guess we will have to go back and do the South Side next time.