K is fortunate to have an involved, loving, and patient father.  When I look at K, I see a mini image of his dad in so many ways.  Not just his face and his smile, but also much of his personality.  The way he approaches playing like an engineer.  How much he loves me.

So we worked on a special photo to help spell out how much we love him…

Thanks for being a wonderful husband, father, and friend.  And to K…a superhero.

I have been VERY excited to get K to the zoo to see the animals.  Prior to his recent trip to visit Mipa and Mipa, the only animals he had seen in person were dogs and birds…and he gets so excited about both of those…I could only imagine how he would react to crazy monkeys!

I don’t remember my exact words, but I told a friend who would also be going that I knew my expectations were too high but that I was hoping for happy kids, fantastic reactions, and award-winning photos.

Let’s start with that last one.  I took two cameras…and both batteries were dead within minutes of arriving.  This is my “award-winning” zoo photo…and we weren’t even in the gates yet…

Mom fail.    Although K did rock that photo.

Thankfully, there were two other moms there who DID have charged cameras, and the rest of the zoo photos you see here will be from them.  (Thank you!)

Crazy monkeys.  Well…they weren’t so crazy.  In fact, the particular cage of them that I was so looking forward to K seeing was empty.  BUT…we did see some gorillas, orangutans, giraffes, tigers, penguins, zebras, lions, polar bears, fish, elephants (my favorite) and seals (K’s favorite).  So while it might not have been a scene out of Madagascar…it was still an upgrade from dogs and birds.

Happy kiddos.  Considering it was over 90 + the black top factor, what was intended to be a brief trip lasted nearly 6 hours, and at no point did we know where to go or what animals would be around and awake…the kids were FANTASTIC!  It took every adult hand we had to keep everyone moving, fed, changed, and happy, but overall I think it was a success.  I actually bought season memberships for our crew, so we look forward to going back (on a cooler day) in the near future.

I think my favorite memory will be how much K liked the seals.  He would point at them and exclaim “seal!”.  I was so proud of how well he could find them in the water, often before I even noticed them.  Of course…he has also been spotting them ever since…including in our backyard…?

Here are a few more zoo pics, as well as a quick swim to cool off from a hot day, and a picnic pancake party the next morning.

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Great Grandad Buck recently sent a train set home with K after a visit to the grandparents house.  Daddy has put the train together, and this evening, K has been the engineer!  He not only enjoyed it, he RAN it!  He would start it up and slow it back down to a stop, only to start it back up again.  He waved as it went by, and let out the occasional “choo choo!”.  Here are my engineers in action…

And here are two videos of K man running the show!

Video 1

Video 2