The "Happy" Zoo Trip

We had no plans this past weekend but still ended up staying pretty busy!

Saturday morning our good friend, Nelly, called to see if we'd like to go to the National Zoo. It was going to be a beautiful day to spend outside. So, we were off to the zoo first thing.

We really enjoyed our morning. Samuel is starting to notice everything the world has to offer and was pointing at lots of different animals. We visited the farm animals first then headed to see lions, tigers and Happy the hippo (which is, of course, Benjamin's favorite animal).

We had great timing and were able to see Happy very close up! He was up out of the water eating some hay. Benjamin was thrilled to see him and watched for quite awhile. He was probably only about 6-10 feet away from Happy. In past visits, we've only managed to see hippos submerged in water... only coming up for a few seconds then resubmerging. I thought this was great but of course Benjamin wanted to know why he wasn't in the water!

As some of you may know, Happy the hippo is looking for a new home. The National Zoo is developing a new exibit for the elephants but it will take up some of Happy's current home. Of course, with the hippo currently serving the role as Benjamin's favorite animal and main attraction at the zoo, we were not happy to learn this news. He will still be here for about another year before he makes his big move so hopefully we'll still get to visit with him a few times between now and then.

It was great seeing all the animals but the boys highlight was spending time at the play tunnels (that are supposed to simulate how prairie dogs go through tunnels). Samuel just loved climbing through them and peeking at me. Benjamin took a different route and enjoyed climbing ontop of the tunnels. They both exerted a lot of energy and Samuel was sound asleep as we pulled out of the parking lot of the zoo.