Daddy Adventure Day - Henry Vilas Zoo

The weather today is unseasonably warm for March, with a high of 63F.  After a long winter inside, we had to take advantage of the warm weather to get outside and do something fun before the cold weather comes back tomorrow.  So Ben and I decided to take the girls to the zoo.

I was talking to Uncle David on the phone this morning while getting Megan dressed, and I said "Today we are going to the Z-O-O" and Amelia immediately said "We're going to the zoo!  Z-O-O spells zoo!"  I guess maybe I'll have to start spelling things in Spanish around here...

We had a fantastic time at the zoo today!  We got there just before 10, and while the thermometer said it was 50 degrees, it was really windy and we had to keep our winter coats on.  But when we left the zoo around noon, the weather had warmed up enough that we could take our coats off.  Yay!

As we were driving to the zoo, I asked Amelia what animal she wanted to see the most, and she said the prairie dogs.  Only two prairie dogs were outside today, but they put on quite a show, popping out of their holes and kissing each other.

Ben & Megan's favorite animal to watch today was the polar bear, who was pacing his exhibit and even swimming.  Normally when we go to the zoo, the polar bear is sleeping in his den, so we were all excited to see him active.  We even got to see him shaking himself off!  Here's Megan waving hello to the polar bear:

Megan also really liked seeing the animals in the reptile house.  A lot of the tanks are close to the ground, so she could stand on the ground herself and watch the turtles swimming.  Plus there were little stools to climb on to see the smaller reptiles and insects.  Megan particularly liked the Madagascar hissing cockroaches.  Yuck!

 
My favorite animals were the penguins.  Again, the penguins are normally very boring at our zoo, standing around in a little huddle and not doing anything.  Today we got to see them swimming, waddling, and splashing.  We watched the penguins for a long time!

We had good views of the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!):

And of course the animal cutouts are always popular!

Megan learned to say "zoo" today, and she told us that she wanted to see the lions (raahhrrr), the monkeys (ooo, oooo, ooooo while tilting her head from side to side) and the penguins (lahlahlahl which means waddle).