Family and Friends - Day 2

Today started off with a trip to the Calgary Zoo. We got out of the house right on time and easily found our way to the zoo and arrived well before any of the crowds did. Even so, the lineup was a bit long, especially as one of the tellers had forgotten to change the closed sign to an open sign, so people were avoiding the one entrance into the zoo.

The first few animals we stopped to look at were still sleeping, but the boys were excited to see them. Who isn't excited to see a tiger? Even one that is fast asleep? The first half of our time at the zoo passed by in a bit of a blur. Evan was once again super excited to see the monkeys, but the kids had the most fun in the butterfly enclosure. It is essentially a greenhouse full of butterflies of all different shapes and sizes. Xander kept pointing out the painted ladies (the only butterfly he knows), while Sandra tried to get a picture of a large butterfly that had a deep blue wing colour.

Around lunch, we stopped at a table and ate the food we brought along. To our amazement, Jonathan asked for and ate some watermelon. For those of you that don't know, Jonathan will not eat solid/chunky food. He will spit it out, or even force himself to throw up if he gets it to the back of his tongue. Today, though, he willingly ate watermelon, so there is hope for him.

After lunch, the zoo was much busier, and we had to fight our way through large crowds to look at the gorillas. Things got really insane when we arrived at the indoor part of the giraffe and hippopotamus enclosure. Right when we arrived, they rang a bell to let the animals know that it was feeding time. The area was already quite full of people moving through, but once the bell rang, all the people who had already gone through turned around to come back in, and the area got quite crowded. I was stuck in one spot with the two strollers (and Jonathan), while Sandra and the older two boys tried to find some spot where they could see anything. I don't think they were successful. The rest of the African area was just as busy, so it was difficult to see the zebras and lions, but we managed.

We then walked through the prehistoric area, which was a nice walk filled with concrete dinosaurs. It wasn't as busy, likely because concrete dinosaurs are not as interesting as actual live animals. Xander was cute, as he was only interested in the dinosaurs that were represented in the DinoBots. After the dinosaurs, we tried to get Evan to play in a little drumming session that was occurring in the zoo, but he was tired and we could not get him to participate. The most he would do is sit on my lap while I played. Before leaving, we let the two boys ride a small pretend train that took a short trip around the park. They had been asking to go on it all day, and we got the biggest smiles when they got on.




After leaving the zoo, we headed over to the Chinook Centre so that we could visit the LEGO store. The biggest problem we had was trying to find a place to park. Not only were there no spots at all, but the parking spots were extremely small and all the parking rows were very close together. We found one spot that I could not get the car into, simply because there was no room to turn in. After finally finding a spot, we went into the mall and found the LEGO store.

Xander had been saving his allowance for months for this trip, and we decided to kick in a little more money for him, since it isn't likely that we'll get back to this store for some time, plus we couldn't leave without buying the other kids (and Dad) something as well. The kids loved the store - Xander quickly found a few things he wanted, while Evan discovered the Toy Story 3 LEGO and impressed the store workers with his "I LOVE TOY STORY 3 LEGO" exclamations. While we were shopping, I got each of the older kids to build a LEGO minifigure at the minifigure bar. Xander created a pirate with glasses. Evan created a girl race car driver, while I created an airline pilot. I did not have enough time to look at it too closely, since the store was extremely busy and I had three small children to keep track of, but some of the LEGO City sets were configured so that you could hold them up in front of a camera, and then watch yourself holding a box with the build kit on it on a TV screen. Very cool.

At the end of the day, Xander purchased a small Star Wars LEGO set, a small LEGO city set, a green base and five bags of the series 4 minifigures. Evan (and Jonathan) purchased a Toy Story 3 set with Jessie in it. I purchased a small container of bulk bricks and two bags of the series 3 minifigures. The best part of the store was the reactions every store worker had to my hat, which is my Boba Fett baseball hat that Steve & Jodi bought me for my birthday last year. I'm pretty certain I could have traded it for a LEGO kit without any trouble at all.

After finishing shopping, we returned to Jeff and Amanda's for a wonderful supper and a relaxing night. Tomorrow is our visit to Jimmy and Jules and the Rider season opener!