Family Road Trip

We loaded up the car last weekend, and headed northeast to Memphis to see Angela and Jeffrey. It was a quick trip, and the only major outing we had time for was the zoo. It had been nearly two years since we had last taken Mattie, and we were all anxious to go back. The Memphis Zoo is really something to see, and there really isn't time in one day to see everything there is, at least not when you have little ones with you. But, the weather could not have been more perfect the day we went, and we had a really great time.

I’m going to skip posting a picture of every single animal we saw, even though I did take pictures of every single animal we saw. I know that’s boring, so I’m just going to include the animals I really loved.

Starting with this little monkey:

Not far inside the zoo, they had a booth set up to do face painting. Guess who HAD TO HAVE ONE? And guess who’s daddy totally buys into all that broken hearted whining about please, please, please, PLEASE can I have my face painted? Actually, with Mattie it was much more dramatic performance that involved tears and looking back longingly at the face painting booth with an arm outstretched towards it as we walked past it. Whatever the case, Matthew caved and paid the ridiculous amount of money that was so disgustingly overpriced that I can’t bring myself to type it here. But, I’ll just say, I could have bought twelve people something off the dollar menu at Sonic for what it cost! Seriously!


But, it made this little girl’s day, and that made her daddy’s day. Worth every penny.

Mattie has not quit talking about the zoo, and specifically the snakes, since we took her two years ago. The snake house definitely made an impression on her, and she was itching to go back. She has kind of a weird obsession with snakes...she's half horrified, half fascinated by them. It's kind of weird, but the snake house was at the top of our list.


They had several snakes out that you could touch, but Mattie couldn’t bring herself to do it. Which was good, because we were told you had to be five years old to touch them. Why? Stupid rules.

The best, most entertaining thing we saw all day was this Orangutan.

He had SO much personality! Look, he even smiled:

He was definitely in performance mode, and put on a little show for us swinging and climbing all over his trees, and even roaring!

I thought he was really cute and charming, and took lots of pictures of him.

And then he started peeing (note the stream of pee underneath him in the above picture), and reminded me that he was just a stinky, dirty animal, and I was done. He wasn't the first animal I saw that day that I felt should really have on some underwear. I'm just sayin'.

Presley was such a trooper all day. She loved being outside, and never even fell asleep the whole time we were there.

Mattie, however, could not hang, and fell asleep somewhere around the grizzly bear exhibit. This kid could sleep anywhere!