Grandpa took us to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It is right near Grandma and Grandpa’s house, so Grandpa bought the kids year passes so we could go whenever we come to visit.
Oliver was so excited about this big Moniter lizard. Which is funny, because usually it is Elora who loves lizards. But he was fascinated and so happy that it was right near the glass looking at him.
Oliver wanted to pose in every one of these cutouts he saw. This one is my favorite though, Ollie the butterfly.
Elora was happy to be a butterfly too. I find it funny that we always take them places to see animals and sometimes the most fun parts of the trip are not really related to seeing anything exotic or unusual…
Oliver loved seeing the gorillas, mostly because he thought it was neat to compare his hand with the gorilla hand and see how big gorilla hands are! There was also a gorilla foot mold, but he had a hard time picking up his leg to compare, so I told him to stick with the hand for comparisons.
The petting zoo at the wild animal park is not filled with barn animals, but with deer. Here is Oliver walking and conversing with one of the deer. I wonder what they were chatting about.
Grandpa was very excited to introduce Marion to the deer also. I am not sure what she thought, but we love Grandpa for being so happy to give the kids all these fun new experiences!
We got to feed the deer and spend time petting them. I don’t think the kids ever wanted to leave. Oliver especially liked feeding them. He would giggle every time the deer would lick his hands.
We went on the carousel just before leaving the park. Elora insisted on riding the hummingbird. She was so excited about it! It is fun to see which animal the kids will pick on the carousel, it is full of endangered and extinct animals.
The kids rode three times, and the last time I finally convinced them to ride next to each other. Oliver and Elora were sad to leave the carousel, but there were no tears (whew! When Elora was Oliver’s age there were ALWAYS tears when leaving the carousel…)
I didn’t get a picture, but when it was time to leave the kids saw the souvenir shop (sigh, always expensive). And what did they pick out? The penny machine where you can stamp pennies with pictures of animals. They were both so excited about the pennies that they never even went in the shop!
I suppose 50 cents is a lot to pay for the kids to stamp a penny, but they were both so excited I let them each pick one out. Elora got the hummingbird of course, and Oliver since elephants are his new favorite animal picked the elephant. As soon as he got it he asked if he could spend his elephant money on candy…
