(our epic family selfie at the end of the day... you know we are cool, just admit it.)
we went to the zoo on tuesday!!!!! maddie was gifted a family pass for her birthday last year from one of the girls i work with, who is ultra generous and such a sweet heart... so now that it's not ghastly perth summer and i'm not extremely pregnant, we decided to make a day of it. i haven't been to the perth zoo since i was in school and i was thrilled to see how fun it was and how family friendly all of the exhibits are.
(hanging with the gorillas inside the front entrance)
joseph decided he wanted a feed when we had been inside the zoo for exactly three minutes... just long enough to buy a map (side note for next time, the perth zoo has a free app available from the appstore with all the same information available...) so we spent the next 30 mins hanging out in the mothers room while maddie and doug checked out the penguins and their feeding time. oh the joys of a breastfeeding mother. haha.
(doug and maddie with the lions sign... as doug is a mad brisbane lions: afl supporter he couldn't resist)
maddie looked as though she had won the lottery, as she ran ahead of us to each enclosure, asking a million questions and pointing at everything on the map... i wanna go here, i wanna see thisssss. she is so funny, and was determined to see everything and get there as fast as her little legs would take her.
joseph spent pretty much the entire day like this. all through the animals, all through lunch - with a brief time laterin which he woke up and grizzled, then promptly went back to sleep. what a dream child. thank goodness for the cozy bugaboo cocoon. i was actually petrified that he wasn't going to sleep that night but thankfully he did okay.
i am so in love with this picture even though doug rolled his eyes hard at me when he realised what i had done. in australia it is well known that people with red hair are affectionately (and sometimes not so affectionately) called rangas, which is short for orangutan. so of course i could not resist snapping this shot of my two rangas watching a real ranga. so many jokes, so little time...
i also of course had to get this one... you can barely even see the tiger in the background, he was being a little antisocial and kept hiding from us - but for good measure... "to the tiger in the zoo - madeline just said pooh pooh." of course i couldn't get her to even say it at the time, but as soon as we were away at another enclosure the dag starts saying poopooo poopoooooo at the top of her voice. two year olds certainly do what they want, not what their parents want.
i loved the australian animal area, including this fabulous huge numbat carved out of wood, seeing as the real ones didn't want to come out and play... i always picture my dad at times like that cracking jokes about the animals... i am sure he would say that the zoo has an empty enclosure and charge people cause we wouldn't know any better and then laughing to himself. nothing like a good dad joke hey!
i was also a little disappointed, as i really wanted the tasmanian devil to look like it does in the warner brothers cartoons and be whizzing around in a whirlwind... if only. they are incredibly cute, although doug assures me that they are not in any way friendly.
random things like this make me happy - i wonder how long it has been there...? it's by the elephant enclosure and looks soooo old, almost like something out of one of the temples in thailand - like in tomb raider? it's gorgeous though!
and there were these cages, which although they are a wonderful memory and look amazing from a historic point of view were so sad. they are the original cages from back in the day when animals were simply kept. not loved and cared for, more something to have and show off. it is wonderful to know how cared for the animals are now - and these cages create a good comparison for the public to understand the difference.
the saddest part of my day however was the fact that the vintage carousel was not working. i seriously almost cried! i have photos of me on it as a child with my mum and i was hoping to be able to do the same with madeline. it is so old that it is heritage listed (i read up about it here before we went) and so cute. the only good thing about it being out of order was that i was able to take some beautiful pictures of it without anyone around it, but i was still pretty shattered. but... on the bright side - i guess we will have to make another trip to the zoo to have a ride!! :) was such a fun day - can't wait to go again!
