the time we went to the zoo.

on saturday we took alice to the zoo for the very first time. honestly, im a little embarrassed that it took us almost two and a half years to get her to the zoo, but for one reason or another weve just never been able to make it happen. but lately alice has been asking almost every day if we could go to the zoo. so last weekend I MADE IT HAPPEN. even if it meant going the morning after a night wedding on a weekend where james was playing on the worship team at church and i inadvertently made james miss dorks and dragons night. 

none of that really matters, because what matters is that we finally went to the zoo. 

and alice loved it:

now, i havent been to the la zoo in a long time. probably six or seven or maybe even more years (i remember my family had a membership when i was 15-16 and im pretty sure we went at least once after that but im not sure when that was), and apparently theyve done a LOT of work to the old zoo that i do NOT remember from the last time i was there. 

for instance, one of the first things you see when you get past the gift shops is this giant sea world status tank for the seals where you can actually see them swimming and playing instead of the old, sad concrete enclosure they used to live in. alice really liked watching the seals swim:

the next thing we checked out was the brand new reptile house, which despite being a little crowded and claustrophobic (it was saturday, after all, i imagine its not nearly as bad on a weekday), was really, really cool. especially because most of the exhibits have perfectly kid-height windows:

alice really liked all the snakes, she was particularly enamored with this one:

 (though she kept calling them "giant snails", i guess we need to work on that)

my favorite part of the reptile house was these cute cuddling lizards:

after that we headed outside to look at some more animals before lunch, with such highlights as this komodo dragon eating from the HUGEST bone ive ever seen:

and alice asking me to drop her in the kangaroo cage. im not kidding. she just really, really wanted to hang out with the kangaroos i guess. 

then we took a short break for lunch (where i noticed that i accidentally bought tuna pouches with soy sauce in them and almost had a panic attack because i only had snacks for the whole day but then we got ice cream and everything was better), and looked for some more animals. the gorilla exhibit also has some really great kid-friendly windows so alice got to get really close to the gorilla:

then something funny happened. i was trying to take a picture of james and alice together, and she would not look directly at the camera lens. shed look at my face, or at my hands, or at james or anything else but not the camera. so i pointed to the camera lens and as im trying to explain to alice where she needs to look james says "the camera has an eyestalk, just like a dalek. look at the eyestalk"

and then boom:

perfect picture. because apparently "dalek" and "eyestalk" are more relatable to alice than "camera" and "lens". not sure if this is a parenting win or fail...

now alice had two requests as far as animals were concerned: lions and elephants. well when we finally found the lions, they were closed. no lions, just a sign reading "this exhibit is closed for the day". so while alice didnt get to see the lions, she did have fun with the telescope thats supposed to be for looking at lions:

so much fun, in fact, that i had to physical pry her away from it kicking and screaming in order to go look at the giraffes. its a rough life when your mom makes you look at giraffes:

(this is alice upset because not only am i a mean bossy pants that made her look at giraffes, i am also a big fun sucker for not letting her get into the cage to play with them)

then came my favorite part of the day, when we sat on the shaded amphitheater thing to watch the chimpanzees do chimpanzee stuff:

normally im not a big fan of chimpanzees but there were SO. MANY. BABIES. it was adorable.

after that, we looked at some more animals, took a little break at the playground (i totally forgot the zoo had a playground), and then we saw the black bear get a snack and that was cute:

now my one chief complaint about the la zoo is that the layout is really confusing and even with a map its difficult to see where things are in relationship to each other and the twisty paths that connect them. so the elephants that alice specifically requested to see? we didnt even find those until the very end of the day after she had fallen asleep. 

but we did end up getting a membership for the year, so well be back. and alice will finally get her lions and elephants.