Monday, July 23, 2012

Our Year Of Adventure: Go to the zoo

We got our week off to a great start this morning! I'm loving having Shawn home! He went with me on my bike ride this morning and then we got in the car and headed out to the zoo.

I am a huge lover of zoo's, so you would think that we would go to the zoo all the time, but I've always been kind of disappointed by the Boise zoo. As far as zoo's go, it's not super impressive. They've done a lot of work on it in the past few years though and it's a lot better than it used to be. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I go these days. They've added a while African exhibit area with lions and giraffes and they've added a kids farm area where you can feed goats and a few other fun exhibits that have made the zoo a lot nicer. 

My favorite part of the zoo is the butterfly exhibit they have every summer. It's only there for a few months, so I always try to go at least once. It's a big greenhouse type enclosure full of flowers and butterflies. I love butterflies and I love getting in there with my camera. After a few years of visiting the butterfly exhibit, I really have way more pictures of butterflies than I really need, but I enjoy taking pictures of them anyway. I'm going to make a separate blog post in a few minutes with the butterfly pictures I took today.

 The best part about the butterfly exhibit this year was that Clarissa is old enough to enjoy it! This is the first year we've really taken her in there. We were worried at first because Clarissa actually has a huge fear of bugs, especially flying bugs. We've been working with her because she completely falls apart if we're outside and something flies past her. She hates bugs. So I wasn't so sure how she'd do in a room full of butterflies, but it was really funny because she absolutely LOVED it! I don't think that she realizes that butterflies are bugs. If we're in the backyard and a dragonfly flies by, she freaks out. Butterflies, on the other hand, are apparently her new best friends. She wanted to touch them SO bad! We kept telling her that she couldn't touch them, they were just to look at. I could tell it was taking every ounce of willpower she has not to touch them. She was completely fascinated by them. We had a really good time with the butterflies. They liked Shawn's shirt, so he got a few ride alongs and Josh got one to land on his hand. 

My other favorite part of the zoo was feeding the sloth bear. Anytime there is an opportunity to feed an animal, I'm all over it. This animal feeding opportunity wasn't as fun as some of the others because you couldn't actually get close to the bear, but it was fun anyway. They gave us a cup of live mealworms and we dropped them one by one into a tube and the bear was on the other side of the tube behind glass and he sucked up the worms. It was kind of entertaining to watch. 

We also got to feed goats, and I always love doing that. Clarissa fed them and she kept saying that she fed the bunnies, lol. I don't know why she thought goats were bunnies, but it was cute. 

All in all it was a great trip to the zoo.The weather was beautiful and it was great day to view the animals. Fun was had by all! :)










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