Our day at the Zoo!!

We made it to the St. Louis Zoo today, and we got there only an hour and a half after I had planned to! haha  The awesome thing about the St. Louis Zoo is that admission is FREE!!  You can bring coolers and food and drinks inside, so you don't have to pay for meals, and as long as you park on the street, parking is free, too!  You have to pay 15 dollars to park in the zoo lots, so we found a spot on a nearby street and walked to the zoo entrance. The walk was tough, especially on the way back to the car after an exhausting day when the kids were fussy & wanting to be held, but I was happy that we managed to keep our zoo day from costing us anything!  (Except gas money... which was actually a lot... but we won't count that!)

How cute is her outfit?  And so appropriate for our day at the zoo... that was on purpose. :)

Ready to see some animals!

Our first stop in the zoo was to see the penguins.  We figured it was a good place to start--with some cute little birds who waddle around and just look adorable.  But Naomi was terrified!  She freaked out when we tried to wheel the stroller closer to the exhibit, even though the penguins were behind glass.  She wouldn't even let us take her out of her seat in the stroller.  It was so funny... who's afraid of penguins?

After the penguins, we decided to stop and eat our yummy packed lunch.  I just want to say how much I love our double stroller!  We have a little cooler that fit perfectly in the bottom storage part of the stroller, along with our baby carrier and a bag with all of our lunches/snacks.  I squeezed the diaper bag in between the two kid seats, and our phone and Flip video camera in a little compartment up by the handle.  And then both kids fit into the stroller, too, of course!  It's awesome--I would never be able to take both girls anywhere without that thing.

My awesome double stroller!

Me & my baby at lunch

Naomi did NOT want to take a picture, so this was the best I got.

After lunch, Naomi was in a much better mood.  She didn't seem scared of any of the animals we went to see, which was a relief.  After seeing her reaction to the penguins, I was pretty worried about our zoo trip--if she was that terrified of cute little penguins, the outlook for our day was not too good! We stopped back at the penguins again on our way out, and Naomi seemed fine, so we are hoping her emotional reaction the first time was due to something other than a fear of birds!

We went through pretty much the whole zoo--all the cool animal exhibits, anyway!  My favorites were the elephants and especially the hippos--they were more entertaining than any other animal we saw.  Most of the animals were just laying around in the shade being lazy.  The hippos were swimming back and forth and pressing their faces up to the glass.  Jacob was a little concerned with how thin the glass looked... I'm pretty sure if it had broken, Jacob would have taken off and left the girls & me behind in the dust!

hippo!

Naomi, holding her hippo, watching the hippos!  One was swimming away from them and one was swimming toward them... I labeled the first hippo's butt and the second hippo's face in case you couldn't tell. You're welcome.

Overall, it was a good day!  It was way more exhausting than I realized it was going to be, and I am glad the high was only 80 instead of 90 like it's going to be later this week--I don't think I'd want to be dragging two kids around the zoo in 90 degree weather.