Free Zoo Trip #2

Today the oldest daughter and I took the grandbaby on his second trip to the zoo. Perhaps you remember that his first zoo trip was rather boring, in his opinion, and he slept through the entire visit. The baby enjoyed this outing a lot more. He loved looking at everything. Here he is looking at all the cute kids looking at the elephant.

Now he is checking out the really nice fence surrounding the same elephant.

In this picture he is completely intrigued by the water bottle on the stroller.

He loved looking at everything - except the animals.

Try as we might, we couldn't get him to look at a single animal.

As we were heading for the exit, at the end of our visit, we paused in the back of an animal show for a few minutes. All of the sudden the grandbaby started squealing and throwing himself around with excitement. I momentarily thought he was impressed with the snake on the stage, but then I looked around. Nope, it definitely wasn't the snake. It was an entire stroller full of water bottles.

Now, that is something to get excited about.

It was a good thing that the daughter and I had decided right from the start that we were going to the zoo for our enjoyment, to get some exercise and to bask in the beautiful spring weather and not for the baby. The trip definitely met our criteria and was worth every penny we paid for it and a little bit more. Free is hard not to enjoy.

Free Zoo Trip

The first full weekend of every month in 2009 Bank of America customers can get into the Phoenix Zoo for free if they show their Bank of America Check Card and a photo ID. I found out about this deal at the end of September, but chose to watch conference in October rather than go to the zoo. This month I was anxious to take advantage of the free deal, because as you know, I Love Free and there's only one more month in 2009. The only drawback of this deal is that only one person can get in with each Bank of America card, but since every member of my family except the youngest son and the grandbaby have their own BofA card this wasn't a huge problem. When it came right down to it only the oldest daughter, the youngest son and the grandbaby were interested in going with me. It just so happened that the oldest daughter still had one day left on her year long zoo membership and so she and the youngest son used that to get in. I used my Bank of America card and the grandbaby was free just because he was free.

It's a good thing that we didn't pay a lot of money to get the baby in because he didn't even open his eyes the entire three hours we were there.
It's been a while since I have been to the zoo (because I am too cheap to pay to get in) and a few things have changed since the last time I was there. They have added a new path to the children's area.

This was a really dumb addition, in my opinion. You use to walk down a short hill. Now you switch back and forth on a path that has 5 or 6 turns. There is nothing to look at, just a concrete path with wood railings. We decided this is the zoo's attempt to increase the patron's physical exercise.

Here is my token picture of some animals at the zoo.


I liked these javelinas hairstyles. They all looked like punk rockers.

I kept wanting to get the baby out of the stroller to take his picture, but the youngest son didn't think he wanted to wake up. He decided he could pose for pictures in his place. Here he is pretending to be Ariel.

I thought this was a really cool Saguaro slide.


The son said it was a tight fit.

This is the picture I turned around to take while the stroller continued to move on down the hill. The daughter was screaming, but no babies were injured in the process.

Now the two of them like to look at this picture and laugh at how dumb I am.
The oldest daughter and I both agreed that we needed a picture so the baby would know he went to the zoo, so here it is.



I'm sure we'll come again when the grandbaby is a little more interested. Maybe the first full weekend in December, since it's free.

Today I am grateful for

kids that are willing to do things with me.
a daughter who likes puzzles as much as I do.

a husband who washes my van while I just play.