Summer in October

It got up to 75° today, so we skipped naptime and headed to the zoo.  It was a perfect day at the zoo; so many animals were active and it wasn't crowded at all.  Amelia and Megan both said their favorite thing at the zoo was riding the carousel; Amelia rode on a tapir (but she thought it was a warthog) and Megan rode on a poison dart frog.

We rode the carousel first thing when we got to the zoo, and then we played in the park.  It worked out well to do those things first, so then the girls weren't pestering me about wanting to play; instead, they were happy to go look at all the animals.  Megan got a little nervous climbing up the rope ladder this time, but Amelia climbed it lickety-split.

Amelia's favorite animal was the river otter, who was doing backflips off the wall into the water.  We were so excited that he was out playing, because the girls always love to watch him.  I think Megan probably liked the otter the best, too.  She didn't want to leave his exhibit.  Can you see the otter mid-backflip in this photo?

The girls always love to watch the prairie dogs and the meerkats:

 And they wouldn't leave the zoo until we had stopped in the reptile house.  We had the house almost all to ourselves, so the girls got to see the animals as much as they wanted.  They are looking at the box turtles in the photo below, but they also liked looking at the anaconda, the poison dart frogs (Amelia) and the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches (Megan).  Those are right next to the tarantula and the huge millipedes; those things creep me out!

They had to stand behind all the cutouts, of course!

They got pretty goofy hanging on the bars outside the camel exhibit:

And they loved climbing on the giant tortoise statue.  Megan was really having a good time giving the tortoise hugs and kisses, and she didn't want to get down.

This trip, Amelia wanted to get a map of the zoo, so we spent a lot of time looking at the map to determine where we were (thankfully a lot of the animals had photos as labels) and figurning out which way we needed to go to get to the next animal.   She was pretty good at following the routes on the map, but needed some help to translate that into walking directions.

 On the way home, we spent some time talking about how to spell different words.  Amelia's preschool teacher is starting to work with her on that (she spelled "rnbow" today in school) and Amelia is loving it.  She spelled taco, and was thrilled that she knew it ended in the letter o because "the word tells you the letter.  tac-O!"  She also spelled cat, bat, hat, mat, pat, sat, and vat.  I love how excited she is about learning!