We're Going to the Promised Land...

We, of course, wanted to make sure we had lots of adventures with the twins (Turpentine Creek, swimming, etc.). I will tell you now that due to the heat (in the 90s and humidity like we have never felt before), we only really had one out-of-the-house adventure with them. That was a trip to the Promised Land Zoo.

The first part of a trip was the drive-thru zoo where you got to feed animals from your car! I will confess that I have always wanted to do a drive-thru zoo...and so I picked this a little for me... The biggest bummer (as you will see) is that many of the animals were actually penned in. The only ones who were free to come to your car were the deer and emu. But we still had fun!

Ryan checking out the ostriches

Allie checking out the Zebras.

Uncle Nic feeding deer from the window! We did manage to get a deer to come to each of the twins' windows to eat, and they were thrilled!

After the drive-thru, we went to the petting zoo. They had some animals indoor (rabbits, guinea pigs, a python, and an alligator!), and lots outdoors. This was where the twins had the MOST fun!

I'm pretty sure I heard her say, "Mama, I want a pony!"

"Llama, llama red pajama!" They had a baby llama and its mama...because "Llama, llama" is one of their favorite books, they were really excited to see llama & his mama in person! Seriously. They got really excited!

Allie's favorite animal was a baby goat that had a habit of getting loose and roaming free (she has a love of freedom and all those who follow suit!). This little goat jumped up to eat her hat...and she thought it was funny!

The little goat sucked on her finger (which caused me to panic!), and she thought it was fun!

Then the little goat tried to eat her dress, and she had enough. You don't mess with Allie's clothes!

I'm going to start calling Ryan Dr. Doolittle. He loves animals and went to all of them without any fear. His favorites were the cow and camel. I would have thought they were scary (the biggest animals in the petting zoo), but he loved petting them...

...and even tried kissing them! He spent the most time at their pen, and would have climbed in with them if he knew how.

Then we had a picnic surrounded by the animals. All through the picnic the birds (parrots, cockatoos, etc.) kept saying, "Hello!" and since that is one of the twins' favorite sayings they would occasionally respond!

After the picnic Ryan started making the rounds again. Saying "bye" to all of his new friends.

The whole gang :)

Being somewhat of a zoo fanatic, I was thrilled that we got to go to this zoo (even though I was disappointed that we weren't able to hit Turpentine Creek and make it a 2 zoo trip...). And, I honestly think that it was the twins' most exciting zoo experience yet - mostly because it was SO interactive. I'm thankful that, since we only got to have 1 adventure with the twins, this was the one we had!