fly home to me: A trip to the zoo

Al! Hope you are doing well this week and enjoying some nice weather! We are currently in the midst of a pre-fall "cool" front (not cold front, it's not cold yet), and it feels amazing!! Hopefully, it will continue to just get cooler-we are ready for it!

So, we have traveled to visit both parents the last two weekends. Last week we went to Atlanta for Labor day weekend and had a great time. Sunday, I got an itching to go do something a little more adventurous than my "normal" 3 hour Sunday afternoon nap since we usually don't take advantage of being in Atlanta when we're there. I remembered that you had taken a trip to the Wild Safari Adventure somewhere in GA, but I figured out that it is in La Grange...way too far away for an afternoon trip. So, we opted for the Atlanta Zoo instead since it was right down town. (And when I say, "right down town," I mean you could probably see into the zoo from some of the front porches directly across from the zoo parking lot...I would still seriously consider living there though.)

I was reminded how huge elephants are again.

I think it is safe to say our favorites were the chimps and gorillas. They were fascinating to watch

and very humorous. I really enjoyed the ones that had some attitude. It felt like they knew

we were watching them and were just giving us some attitude.

Excuse my all naturale look...unlike the past few days here, it was soo hot that day-

the hair went up in seconds.

Notice Mr. Poser straight above.

There were a couple really young baby chimps, and the female would not

let them out of her sight. She held on to the older baby, by the leg, for what seemed like

forever, so he wouldn't run away before they got their afternoon snack.

A Red Panda just chillin' in the trees.

This is a little hard to see, but it's a family of Otters all waking up from a nap. I watched almost all

of them yawn one right after the other. It was precious.

This was one of my favorite stops of the day! You remember when I was in Chengdu, China back in 2007? Well these pandas are from the same zoo that I visited that summer. I might have even held one of their siblings. I was so excited to see one up close, even if behind glass. Would have taken him right on home ~~if that wasn't illegal.~~

L.O.V.E.

Sam was actually there with me:) Here he is feeding some birds. They were everywhere.

Leave it to my 6'-4" hubby to reach these guys.

Proof we were both there.

Fast forward to this past weekend. We made a quick trip home to visit Mom and Dad, and see two very important people:) It worked out that Ashley was in town, and I've been begging her ~~and Kate~~ to visit me, so she brought Kate over to see us Saturday morning and we had a great time playing and talking! Kate is beautiful and is getting so big!!