THE ZOOOOOOOOO!!

Here they are folks, our pictures from Sonshine's Kindergarten field trip to the Frank Buck Zoo.


As we loaded the bus...do ya think the boy's excited??





This is his Kindergarten class can you spot him? (after talking to his teacher I decided to white out the other kids' faces. I'm sad about it too cuz you just can't believe how adorable all these little guys are!)





ayup, Sonshine's the tall guy in back! I've been telling you I had GIANT children! Here's the proof.

First up was feeding the giraffes! you go on a large gently sloping bridge up to giraffe height to get there. This was straight across from where we were waiting our turn to feed. Since giraffes usually stand 14-17 feet tall according to Wikipedia I'm gonna guess we were about 20 feet up at this point. Sonshine is quite afraid of heights, but he did really well. Since the line moved slowly he had plenty of time to adjust...and only got scared when the wind would blow "It's making me FLY Momma!!"

Here's the kids in front of us feeding.

The lady with the camera that's helping the kids feed is Sonshine's teacher. His beloved "Miss Ladybug"!

This video shows Miss Ladybug helping Sonshine give his leaf to the giraffes.

He's still talking about it! "Their two purple tongues were fighting Momma! The two tongues were FIGHTING!" Memories to last a lifetime!

We found that they don't like to be petted (pet?) and they jerked away at the slightest touch. But so long as someone had a leaf for them they weren't camera shy. Now, I have to ask...how many of you have ever had THIS view of a GIRAFFE??

waaay cool.

continuing around as the bridge sloped back to the ground we had these great views

"Great big Easter Eggs Momma!"

I held tight to my camera! Not only was it a long way down....but no way I was gonna fight the animals to retrieve it!

this ring-tailed lemur was pacing...didn't look to happy with us.


Next to the giraffes this dude was the star of the day! One of the Dads with us kept doing a turkey call (I'm betting he's a hunter-it was impressive) and this tom would respond with massive gobbles! You can see his dame sitting behind him and she never moved off her spot. Could've been a nest of eggs under her so I'll bet Mr Tom wasn't so happy with the intruding "turkey"! Kids loved all that gobbling!!

Bison-big

Next time we go we're taking a roll of quarters. At most of the pens there was a food dispenser with a tray for feeding the animals...for a quarter. This poor deer didn't get anything from us, no matter how hard she looked.

VULTURES!!

"It's the Easter Bunny Momma!"

can't be a true redneck without getting a couple shots of Pink Flamingoes!


This pic's for Mrs Tara, who does the equestrian therapy with the boys. Her favorite animal is the gorilla so we were looking for a gorilla for her. Alas, this is the closest we found.

I have no idea what these two animals are. as I recall they're from S. America. They were cool looking though.





Can you see the way cool playground that was across the drive from the zoo?


(This was another class shot that I cropped out the kids. Since I have a friend who had to move across 3 states to get away from her abusive ex-husband, I can understand there may be good reasons for a parent to NOT want their kid's pictures out on the internet.)




On the way home most of the bus was ASLEEP!

But not my boy....he was so happy!

I have to say this was one of my favorite zoo experiences! The zoo is small and you can easily see everything in about 2 hours. There's a large pavillion by the playground where we ate our sack lunches, then the kids had some time to play before we had to load the bus back to school. There's a train that goes around the perimeter of the zoo, but it was closed for maintenance the day we went. We're hoping that when we go back with all of my kids it will be open!

If you're in the area with kids I recommend spending a morning here! Just be sure you arrive in plenty of time to feed the giraffes at 10:30am!