The Zoo

We believe that the best things money can buy are memories, so it's a tradition in our little family to give experiences as gifts. (Like hang gliding for Matt's birthday or going on anniversary trips.) For Jake's 1st birthday "memory" gift, he unwrapped an elephant pull toy along with zoo tickets.

Last Friday, we made good on the present and headed to Hogle Zoo. Jake is beyond obsessed with puppies, kitties, birds, his Sophie giraffe, and his stuffed monkey, so we were pretty sure it would be a highlight of his little life. And it was! Sure enough, Jake squealed and clapped and beamed at the animals. My family has two cats and Jake chases them around squealing "diddy! diddy! diddy!" (his version of "kitty") throughout the day. Imagine the excitement when he saw the biggest kitties ever at the zoo! The tiger was the first cat he spotted, and he kept clapping and saying "diddy!" over and over, and thereby charmed all of the passersby.

The Hogle Zoo has three babies right now -- an elephant, a giraffe, and a snow leopard. They were adorable! The baby animals were definitely my favorites. Jakey's favorites were the kitties, the monkeys, the giraffes, the sea lions, the meerkats, and the lion drinking fountain. He squealed excitedly and clapped for all of them. The polar bear also captured his attention as it kept swimming up to the glass to peek at its fans, but Jake was a little unsure about all the screaming children that were also watching the bear. Meanwhile, he didn't care much for anything that just sat there or moved slowly, including the big animals like the elephants or the rhinos. Jake just looked at them like, "And your trick is...?" Which is kind of funny, because I bet those will be his favorites in a few years.

Jakey clapping for the tiger

Jake being a gorilla

Stealing sunglasses is Jake's favorite

By the way, while we're on the topic of Jake's first birthday which was an entire month-and-a-half ago... I keep not blogging about it because I lost half the pictures in the great external hard drive crash, and I've been holding out a glimmer of hope that I could get them back. Sadly, though, I've now been told twice that my data is entirely unrecoverable, so perhaps it's time to just accept defeat and move on. To add insult to injury, my laptop crashed two weeks after the external did. Therefore, this blog has been coming to you from my mother's basement computer. Many apologies for being behind in commenting on all of your blogs, but it's just sort of cold down here so I browse from my phone instead. And we all know that typing on a phone is a pain. I just sort of hate technology right now.