Hogel Zoo with the Pipkin Cousins

Mom has been taking care of Cam’s boys a couple of days a week so Kelly can go back to school. Kel is getting her cosmetology license. So, we planned a few outing for the summer to play together.

On this day, we went to the Hogel Zoo together.

The kids are a great age for the zoo. We don’t need any strollers, the can read the signs, they know the names of the animals, and they help each other.

Ashy, our littlest adventurer was the motor for our group. He is the BEST age for the zoo, because he kept everything new and exciting. We checked out the lions first.

Here we are, with our little Pride of Lions.

Next we headed over to the great Ape enclosure.

The kids took turns measuring up.

Onward we went! Ashy just wanted to see the Tigers, his favorite animal. So we decided to take the back road up.

On our way, we stopped by MY favorite place, the Meerkat enclosure. I just love these little guys.

As we went up and over towards the Tigers, the kids were too excited to walk.

We made it to the TIGERS(ABOVE)

THEN we came to the pacing leopard.

Grandma in heaven with her kiddos.

Tiger kids.

Further into the tiger area, we even got to check out a REAL tiger SKULL!

The chalk drawings that were all over the park that day, even had this incredible tiger up there!!!

Everyone was getting pretty dirty from all this chalk art.

We checked out the Alligator, and then went on the carrousel!!

Lions and tigers and frogs-OH MY!

We went over to the Elephant expo and got to see how the keepers car for and feed these beautiful animals.

Ashy had something on his bum….

It took a minute for the presentation to start and the kids kept themselves busy as they waited.

Best buddies, Grandma and Ashy.

We slowly made our way over to the train.

Got cutely loaded up:

The new little baby Zebra!

After the train, we got some treats. I had promised the kids they could have dip n dots. Grandma got the boys some ice cream too, and she and I had Dole Whip!

The day was still young, and there was still so much to see!

We headed back to the Great Ape Enclosure, and do another measure up, and to try and see the baby Gorilla. No luck.

Then over to the Rhinos. Everyone had to see how big their hands were next to a rhino print!

We had come ready to get into the water. So my kids jumped right in! Or in Reese’s case, climb right up!

The kids wasted NO time, having a ball!

This confusing feature:

After nearly an hour playing in the water, we got the kids out of there and on our way.

Cuties. We headed over to the otters, and did another phot shoot near the otter statue.

We made it to Mirah’s favorite place, the Seals and Sea Lions.

Still no polar bears, but these kids insisted that we take a picture here. I actually tried to walk on by, and they made sure we stopped. Haha.

Our last stop of the day was the Small Animal Enclosure. It turned out to be Ashy’s favorite place of the day. The photographs don’t represent it, but we spent a ton of time here. The kids stopped and examined a the little animals in their terrariums. Ashy kept saying, “Grandma! Look!”