Zoorific!

I took a day off work last week so we could all go to the zoo. Shayla has been wanting to go ever since the weather warmed up, and with Max's impending eye surgery only a few days away, I wanted to do something with him before his eye muscles got snipped.

After talking with Shayla about it, we decided to go on Tuesday. We could have just as easily gone on a Saturday, but I can't stand weekend crowds in DC. For me, a mid-week trip is definitely worth burning up a few hours of vacation time.

Tuesday turned out to be the perfect day to take off work. I later learned that it would be the day the Space Shuttle Discovery was set to land at Dulles Airport, and we were also blessed with fantastic springtime weather!

After catching a glimpse of the shuttle that morning, we packed up and drove across the river to the District. Shayla's friend has a daughter who sent us a Flat Stanley in the mail. After snapping a few photos of Stan, we headed over to the zoo. Many of the animals were out and active and we were able to watch the pandas and an elephant eat a bamboo lunch, hear and see the lions roar, see the snakes slither and the lizards, scorpions, and tortoises creep and crawl. We even saw a Komodo Dragon bathe in a shallow pool!

Flat Stanley (or Stanlita?) at the Washington Monument

Cruizin' through the zoo in style!

It's panda time!

Elephant.

Burrowing Owl.

I have always loved zoos and it's great having one so close to us here in DC. The kids enjoyed it as well and it was great to get outside into the nice spring air (although you could easily smell the pollen in the air and poor Wyatt suffered through some pretty severe allergies for the next two days. Poor kid).