The Zoo

Thursday was my birthday. I am 27-years-old now. Not to offend anyone else out there that may be older, but 27 sounds kinda old to me. I don't feel old - in fact, I feel about the same as I did when I was 20. But still, it's starting to sound old to me. I have a hard time believing that in only 3 years I will be 30. Yikes. But anyway, birthdays themselves aren't really a big deal to me. I don't need an expensive present. I don't need a party. Ideally, I'd prefer to just spend my birthday doing something fun with my hubby. I guess the perfect birthday would go something like this: Kevin making me breakfast (and cleaning it up!), going to an afternoon Mariner's game, and ending the day with dinner at Red Lobster (I love shrimp!). But since my birthday falls in the middle of fishing season, I've never been able to spend the whole day with my husband and sometimes I don't get to spend even part of the day with him! In fact, we've often gone out to dinner on a different day than my birthday so that it would work out better with his schedule. And the breakfast and Mariner's game have never happened, but I'm still hoping...

This year I lucked out with Kevin not having a fishing trip the day after my birthday. Unfortunately, the Mariner's were out of town, but we did manage to find something fun to do - we took Abby to the Point Defiance Zoo. Kevin had never been there before (well, except for ZooLights in December several years ago), so I was excited to show him and Abby around the zoo that I grew up going to. Kevin wasn't too impressed right away. We headed to the Asian Sanctuary exhibits first. We stopped by the elephants, but they were too far away and weren't doing anything interesting.

Then we went by the monkey exhibit, but we couldn't see any monkeys. Next were the Asian Small-Clawed Otters, one of my favorites. I was excited to show them to Kevin, but they were sleeping. Cute, but not very interesting to an almost 9-month-old...or husbands, I guess. Next up was the tiger exhibit, but there were none to be seen. Kevin began to grumble about how dumb the zoo was...

Looking for tigers...

Finally, we spotted an animal that was present, awake and actually walking around close to the fence:

Kevin and Abby with a Malayan Tapir in the background.

But the slow pace of the Tapirs did not impress Abby or Kevin much. Abby was much more interested in trying to get her hat off or watching the swarms of children running about. But finally, Kevin and Abby found something that interested them both - the aquarium! The Point Defiance Aquarium is stocked with local fish, the most of which were rockfish of all kinds (canary, black, yellowtail, quillback, etc). Of course, these are the fish Kevin sees every time he has a bottomfishing trip! But that was what he found the most interesting and Abby was glad to accommodate him. I, on the other hand, was pretty bored by the aquarium and kept trying to move through it but had to keep going back when I would realized Kevin and Abby were still back a few windows gawking at the fish again! =)

(If you were wondering why we didn't bring a stroller to the zoo, well, we did - Daddy just decided that he'd rather carry his girl around most of the time! =)

We moved on to other exhibits and soon realized that Abby wasn't really old enough yet to appreciate a trip to the zoo. At the beluga whale exhibit, Abby was more interested in scratching at the wooden railing than watching the show. At another, Abby was too sidetracked by a water bottle left on the ledge to even look in the direction of the animal. At the polar bear exhibit, we couldn't get Abby to see the bears because they were just lying in the sun not moving, but she did find the sun sparkling on the water to be intriguing. There was one animal that got her attention, but unfortunately it was in a negative way. As I stood in front of the walrus tank, an enormous walrus kept swimming by and brushing up against the glass wall. The first time the walrus came by Abby pulled back a little bit and you could tell she just didn't know what to think:

A few times later, she must have reached her limit because she broke out in a wail - caught right as Kevin snapped another picture. =)

I think the most fun Abby had was when we stopped in the shade to have some snacks...which we could have just as easily done at the park across the street from the house rather than go to all the trouble and expense to go to the zoo.

(Isn't it cute how she's sitting with her legs folded to the side?
I think that is the first time she's done it.)

But going to the zoo was still lots of fun if only because the three of us got to spend most of the day doing something different together. And it was a nice 27th birthday - a day late - for me. =)