Another Zoo Day

So today was a fantastic day! We met our friends Sunny and Seth and their two little boys, Ethan and Dylan, at the Reston Zoo! The Reston Zoo is much different then the national zoo. First off, you have to pay to get it. Although children under two are free, it is $10 an adult--plus you have to pay for feed if you want to feed the animals. They have buckets of what looks like mice do do and bottles filled with goats milk. At one point though, I looked over and caught Dylan sucking on the goats milk bottle. Although now I'm thinking he could have gotten very sick, at the time the only thing I could do was pull it out of his mouth and then laugh because it was very funny. I mean, what is a almost two year old going to do with a bottle? Of course put it in his mouth!

Here is a picture of AJ and Dylan looking at an Alligator:

Another difference is you actually get to use that feed to feed the animals and touch them as well! This is a kids dream I guess. It wasn't, however, my dream. You may know by now how I have a slight (or if you ask John a HUGE) obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to cleanliness. The entire time I kept thinking in my head "we are going to catch some God awful disease while we are here'. The animals were covered in mud for the most part. At one point John turned to me and said, "you want to start cleaning them, don't you". Well, my husband sure knows me very well. It took a lot for me not to get in there and start giving those suckers a bath. If it wasn't for me being a little afraid of them attacking me, I would have dived right it. Oh, and they had pigs there. I actually don't know if I have ever seen a real live pig that close up before. Regardless, they are very ugly animals. Anyway, the entire time we were looking at those ugly creatures, I kept thinking "we are going to catch Swine Flu from these things". Luckily, they had hand sanitizer stations EVERYWHERE. I made sure John, AJ, and myself were all hand sanitizered out.

Here is a picture of John and AJ feeding some goats and sheep. These things are RELENTLESS. It really is survival of the fittest! They would kill for the food.

Here is AJ and I posing with the bulls behind us:

The Reston Zoo was a good little size. For it being a fairly small zoo, they had what seemed like more animals then the National Zoo in DC. They also had A LOT less people. I thought for sure it would be packed, but it wasn't--awesome for a Saturday afternoon.

Sunny said in the week leading up to our visit that the best part was the tractor ride. She was so right. We loaded up and quickly got on our way. On our first stop, the camels came right up to us looking for food. These camels, much like the sheep and the goats mentioned above, were RELENTLESS. They wanted food and they wanted it not. We had a Sunny sandwich going--two camels had their necks and heads hoovered over her in a search for something--even plastic. If you ever go on this ride--PROTECT your bags/cameras/everything because these camels will take it from you! A little girl behind me had her bag stolen from right under her nose by a sneaky camel. Seriously, I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. Sunny was so right when she said that ride was the greatest part of the entire zoo! Sadly, we didn't get any pictures as we were trying to protect ourselves from the animals! If I take AJ back, that is one thing I will make sure we get--lots of pictures of the camels attacking us! Here are some other pictures (ugh..try getting a 15 month old to smile when all he wants to do is run around!):

After the zoo, we all strolled over to our house for dinner. I must say, it was a great night. Ethan is 3 and Dylan is nearly 2. AJ doesn't get a lot of play time with other kids. He enjoyed himself. Although I love playing one on one with AJ, I didn't need to as he had two other boys to play with. We basically just let them go off and do their thing while we kept a distance eye on them. It was really good for AJ to get that exposure to other kids his age. It makes me happy with our decision to send him to school in the new year (I'll save that update for another post later!).

Something else hit me tonight--the desire to have another child. I know what you all are thinking, here comes baby number 2! I know in my mind that it's not the right time, but I can still want something! We truly are not ready to start expanding our family, but I still want to have another one so AJ will have a buddy to play with all of the time! In the meantime, we are just going to start having to have more play dates with Ethan and Dylan!

After the Hammerly family left for the evening, AJ and John helped me clean up! The boys all really made a great mess--but the toys are so easy to clean! I started to sweep, but AJ insisted on sweeping for me! I felt like a little princess with my boys cleaning for me! I must be doing something right--here is proof my little man will be a great husband like his daddy one day!

So how else to end a wonderful day then with a big glass of red wine? I'm going to go retire with said wine. Church and a visit with the Hall side of the family is tomorrow! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!