Hogle Zoo

On June 1st, my Mom and I took the kids to the zoo. We always go together at least once every year. Our first trip was when the twins were only 2 1/2 months old. Our zoo trips now are easier in some ways and harder in others.

The morning started off with Beck jumping out of bed, which rarely happens. Beck loves animals! The night before the zoo he recounted his last two zoo trips to Randy with amazing accuracy. How he remembers all those details amazes me! Seeing as how they were almost a year ago.

Tate is never hard to wake up. He is always ready to go and do things. Trey on the other hand cried because we were not watching Buzz. I fed them, dressed them, sunscreened them and we were on our way. Trey was still crying because we didn't watch Buzz.

The boys fell asleep on the drive, so Trey's crying stopped. But as soon as we got to the zoo. He asked for Buzz. He was somewhat distracted by the entrance of the zoo while we bought tickets. If you haven't heard, they are having Zoorassic Park this summer at the zoo. They have replicas of dinosaurs placed all throughout the zoo. This made Tate and Beck even more excited.

The second dinosaur that we saw spit water out of his mouth. Not being a dinosaur expert I have know idea what is was, but I would've put it in the raptor family.

That dinosaur there got Trey's legs as we were walking by. This was probably 5 minutes into our zoo trip. He became hysterical and it went downhill with him from there. Tate loved the dinosaurs and now Trey was terrified of them. Since they were in the same stroller it made things interesting. Trey cried when he saw one and Tate cried because he couldn't touch them. Yes, we were a rolling freak show.

We went to the bird show

Beck and Tate loved it. If it weren't for Google Images of Buzz on my phone, Trey wouldn't have made it through that show.

Next we saw the gorillas followed by a snake and gross bug show. I added the gross part in myself.

All Tate wanted to do at the snake show was walk up and down the stairs. By himself. This were not little stairs they were quite the step up and down. And yes, I leash the twins. I still feel a twinge of quilt every time I put the leash on, but they would have run off and killed themselves without them. They let the kids pet one of the snakes at the end of the show. Tate was still out climbing, but Beck and Trey touched it. It was the only time Trey was happy during that show.

Next was the elephant show. Which usually is pretty cool. The elephants do cool tricks, but no luck this time. They didn't have the baby elephant in the show and all they did was tell us about the different parts of the elephant. Although, Beck used to be afraid of the big elephant that sneezes on everyone outside of their cage and this year he actually sat on the trunk!

Shortly after we ate lunch a miracle happened. Trey fell asleep! He had been screaming to "home play buzz!" The entire time. During his nap he missed the carousel. I felt kind of bad, but not bad enough to actually wake him up and possibly start the screaming over again.

Trey woke up shortly after leaving the carousel. The crying continued. There was a dinosaur that you could touch so we let the kids play on that.

Trey actually smiled!!

We then went to get on the Zoofari Train and the screaming reached a new level. Trey did not want to wait in line. We had to wait for 2 trains before we got on ours. Once we were sitting on the train he instantly stopped crying. We got off the train, the crying continued. Until they found the ball.

We left the zoo. All 3 slept on the way home. When we pulled into our house I told Trey he could watch Buzz now. He broke out in a smile.

Out of all the animals we saw at the zoo this was the one Beck was most interested in

In case you can't find this amazing creature it's the little black dot in the middle. It's a rolly polly that he saw by the restrooms. He starred in amazement at this thing for quite a while. Our next "zoo" trip might be out on our sidewalk.

Beck had an amazing time and carries his zoo map around with him everywhere. Everyone he sees he pulls out his map and tells them all about the animals we saw at the zoo.

With all the fun of wrangling a screaming Trey the entire time I have never been so exhausted after a zoo trip!