Roaaarrrrrr!

This past weekend was absolutely beautiful in New England. While most of the east coast had a rough weekend, we just had a little rain and moderate wind on Saturday night...so we were able to enjoy two sunny days in the high 50's and low 60's!

On Sunday we headed to Boston and ended up at the Franklin Park Zoo. It's a small zoo - at least considering what we are used to in DC, Baltimore, and San Diego - but it was so fun! You can get really close to the animals and that was very exciting for Jack!

First, I need to give you a disclaimer for the photos - I left the camera battery charging in the car, so all the pictures are from our phones - sorry if the resolution isn't great!

We started off looking at the Zebras and Ostriches. We were about 2 feet from a huge ostrich...Jack kept pointing to it's feet....which were huge and really weird looking!

After that, we headed over to the big cats - and they did not disappoint.
Here Jack and Daddy are checking out the tigers.

Next we moved on to the lions. This male lion really put on a show for us. Every 5 minutes or so he would wake up, walk around and ROAR! Jack thought this was great and roared back at the lion. We spent at least 10 minutes watching this lion. When he was resting, the lion would roll on his back as if to say "rub my belly".

Here is the lion during his performance - ROAR!

Jack is checking out the lion - he didn't want to leave when it was time to move on!
SUPER close to the roaring lion!

Emma slept through the first half of the zoo. When she woke up, she spent some time looking at her own personal zoo - her friendly giraffe and vibrating worm.

Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of the absolute BEST part of our trip - the Gorillas! One of the gorillas has a 5 month old baby. Mommy gorilla is so cute - she carries her baby right up to the window and plops down so everyone can admire her and the cute little baby...and so she can do some people watching I think. When you look into a gorilla's eyes, there is an amazing connection - you can really see how much they are like us. When I walked up to the glass, I was holding Emma...who is only 2 months older than her little baby...but much bigger (funny since Momma gorilla is WAY bigger than me!) When I first walked up, the Mommy gorilla looked at me, looked me in the eyes, looked down at her baby, looked at me again and then looked at Emma for about 30 seconds. It was quite a moment, like we both acknowledged each other and that we shared something very special!

Of course we wore the kiddos out with all the zoo fun, so they caught some zzz's on the way home!