Birthday Zoo Trip

This year for Hailey's birthday we decided to take her on a special zoo trip instead of having a big party. This girl LOVES animals and can tell you all kinds of things about them so we knew she would love it. Plus we decided to leave Reece with a babysitter so it was a two-on-one day with Ryan, Hailey and I. I think that made the day even more special for her too. 

We told her the day before that we were going to the zoo and she was SO excited and immediately started asking what kinds of animals were there and what we were going to see. This is her in the morning before we left. 

Just a little excited?!

She said she was most excited to see the grizzly bear and polar bears so when we got there we set off to find them first. We came across the seals and sea lions first and they were so fun to watch. 

Hailey was obsessed with all of the statues at the zoo and wanted to pet all of them. 

We found the polar bear but he wasn't out yet so we took a look in the polar bear den first 

We decided to check back later and set off to see what else we could find. We found a snapping turtle

All kind of lizards and snakes 

A honey bee exhibit 

Then flamingos 

Then all kinds of tropical frogs and birds

That was all on the "North America" side. Then we stopped for lunch and tackled the "Africa" side. We saw lemurs

Chimps, lions

Giraffes

Zebras, ostriches, elephants and rhinos

And of course petted lots of statues along the way

About that time our girl started getting VERY tired, she had been up since 4:45 after all ;) so we took the tram back to the front of the zoo and decided to take one more peek to see if the polar bear was out. He was! He was sleeping...but that was enough for our girl 

We let Hailey pick out one thing from the gift shop before we left. She found this purple giraffe in a purse and could not be talked into anything else! The girl knows what she wants. 

She had a GREAT time at the zoo and we had a great day with our big girl!