Zoo Trip with Tante JaJa

Janneke came into town this week, Wed - Sunday.  Today was going to be a nice day, so I thought we'd go to the zoo after we visited Mr. Steffeck.  Mr. Steffeck declined a visit from us, so we were free to head down to the zoo at our earliest convenience.  I asked Zachary if he'd like to skip school and go to the zoo with us, but he elected to NOT miss school.  Crazy.  He did NOT want to miss show-and-tell!  So, Janneke, Wyatt and I made our way down to Lincoln Park Zoo.  So lovely that it's free!  Free parking, on the other hand is a bit tough to come by, but in the end we found one tiny spot.  The Fit made it into the spot with about 1.5" clearance in the back, and very nearly touching bumpers in the front.  Jan had to get out of the car while I moved teeny tiny bits forward and back and forward and back.  Just barely got the trunk open to get the stroller out!  Quite an accomplishment...just for free parking!

We started off at Wyatt's favorite - the Cat House.  Then proceeded to hit as many animals as we could in the 1.5hrs we had before we needed to pick up Zach from school.  Here are some of the better pics of what we saw:

Lovely giraffe!

Love the Silverbacks!

Tante JaJa pushing Wy in his chariot

Beautiful lioness

Lazy lions!

We saw many other animals, like all the cute penguins & sea birds, monkeys, rhino, bears, etc.  We were not able to take many pictures however, because task-master Wyatt had us moving on from each exhibit pretty quickly.  We'd linger a bit and he'd say "Ok, let's go". :)

As we were driving back to get Z, I lamented that I wished I'd had the forethought to pack lunches so we could have a picnic lunch with Art - it was gorgeous outside!  Janneke then offered to treat us all to lunch at Burger King, which we took to go and met Art on the grass near the lake by his office for a wonderful picnic lunch!  Thanks Tante JaJa!