Houston Zoo with friends

We love having a membership to the Houston Zoo! It is the best outing on a nice day. It seems we always go there on big field trip days, but we tend to do the zoo in the opposite order of the schools' route, so we don't run into too much craziness. We also love that we can bring our own food and drinks. That really helps make it a cheap day. Except this trip I brought food, and Kelly and Jackson bought their lunch. You wouldn't believe how vastly inferior our boring lunch was to their mediocre zoo cafe food. Somehow we managed to survive that injustice and have a marvelous day at the zoo.

There is no order to these photos. I took some on my camera, some on my phone, and I Instagrammed the photos from my phone in a random order at different times (weird, I know). So I really don't know what goes where! 

My kids just love Kelly. I can't imagine why! She pays them no attention.  

A komodo dragon! This was especially exciting because the boys are obsessed with Curious George. In one episode, he takes the subway to the zoo because he wants to see the komodo dragon. And guess what - his subway ride turns into a crazy adventure! That George sure does have a lot of adventures. 

Doesn't everyone have their morning snack standing in front of the komodo dragon? I was actually really excited any time it moved. It stood still as a statue most of the time. 

William loves to play these drums. He won't play them if other kids he doesn't know are using them. Luckily for him, we had them all to ourselves. 

They got a kick out of climbing all over these zoo strollers. Random. 

I had this one made into a magnet (Shutterfly offered a free large magnet deal awhile back). I just love it! 

I can't tell you how much I get a kick out of the fact that Ryan can now hang with the big boys. He can do pretty much everything they do, and they don't seem to mind.

There was a lot of excitement with the chimpanzees that morning. They were very active because they had just been served some oatmeal. They put it in these pipes that are set into the mound that the chimp on the top right is sitting on. The chimps stick branches in the pipes and then eat the oatmeal off the branches. We watched for a long time. There was a juvenile male that was acting really rowdy and crazy. I noticed that the zoo employees walked away as soon as he started acting up. I remember one time when an orangutan was acting crazy, and the zookeeper told the volunteers that the best thing to do is walk away and not give him any attention. Obviously these people knew the drill and didn't give that chimp any attention. Of course we were totally enthralled and taking video. :)  

We rarely see the tigers at the zoo. Seems like they are always sleeping. It was neat to see this one up close. 

These fish really are huge and fun to watch. 

Yuck!