Zooby, Zooby, Zoo

Well, we are enjoying the last week before school begins here in Minnesota. And what better way to spend it than at the zoo? We decided to head to the Minnesota Zoo for the day and enjoy the beautiful weather. We had a great time and continued to work on getting a picture with all three kids looking in the right direction.

The Zoo is designed for the animals to roam freely in large areas. Here we tried to get the kids all together. "Alex, stay right here." Oops, we'll have to try again.

Alex just LOVES animals. The Zoo had a beautiful working farm with all the traditional farm animals. Here he walked right into the goat pen and started chasing them around and petting as many as possible.

Liv preferred to use a brush to pet the goats.

Alex is seriously into trucks, trains and tractors. Although he dove right into the goat pen and starting petting, he was a little aprehensive about actually getting onto the "trach-tur" but didn't mind sitting on my lap and preferred to have Nick along too.

Cows are huge. No wonder you can see the from the road. Alex stood mesmerized as the cows chewed.

"Nick, Olivia! Quick, Alex is coming. Stick your heads back into the holes! Julie, did you get it?"

"Alex, up here."

Nick is too much like his dad. This is the best way to hand feed animals as Olivia peeks through another hole. Alex enjoyed running around, stomping around and exploring this barn.

Normally we would not call Nick "chicken"

The Zoo has Russia's Grizzly Coast, the centerpiece of which is some HUGE grizzly bears. On the way there, we stopped to see other animals in the Grizzly Coast including this leopard. It's amazing we could get this close. The exhibit is very well done with a huge viewing area where we could be separated by glass and see a lot.

The grizzlies have the same set up with a larger viewing area where you can see them as they plod around and check things out. There is also an underwater viewing area where we saw trout swimming around and the grizzlies gazing longly down at them.

Alex kept pointing at the grizzlies and saying "bear, bear, bear." We shimmied though the crowd right up to the glass for a closer look at the bears and the fish. It was all good until one of the 400 pound bears entered the scene and jumped into the water, exciting the crowd and sending Alex toward the exit (it was a little TOO close up for him!)

Before we left, we took the monorail ride around the Zoo for an overview of the entire place. It was nice to sit back and see the whole park and see a whole bunch of "cows" according to Alex.