Spring Break Fun

The fun part about taking a vacation earlier than the kids' scheduled spring break is that we had an entire week at home to enjoy together! And this year, the weather was in the 70s and even 80 degrees one day, so we didn't need to be anywhere else to enjoy the warm weather!!

We decided to go the Minnesota Zoo one day for the first time since we moved to Minnesota!! I intentionally didn't want to go right after we moved here because we had just left the #1 zoo in the country at Jack Hannah's Zoo in Columbus, so I was worried we would be disappointed. But I think waiting 2 1/2 years was long enough because we had a great time!!

Watching the sea otters swim

What would a trip to the zoo be without baby Ashley??

This bear was massive!! Blake kept saying "HUGE bear says Roar!!"

I packed lunches for us and unfortunately Blake saw them in the stroller at about 10:30am!! So I let him eat a sandwich and you can tell where his focus was....

Wyatt and Sadie looking at the wild boars..man those things are really stinky and ugly!

This was, by far, the coolest thing we saw that day. This leopard was sitting about 20 yards away from the glass, looking towards us. We could tell he was watching something intently and we looked down to see a little chipmunk....I told the kids to just wait and see and within a minute, he pounced right for it and lunged towards us!!! It was absolutely breathtaking just to watch the power and speed and focus in this beautiful animal!

...walking away dejected as he wasn't able to catch the little guy

(It would have been cool to see him catch it, but I was glad I didn't have to see a dying chipmunk struggle in his mouth and try and explain it all to the kids!)

Blake taking his turn

Sizing himself up with the little bear cub

And the papa bear

The kids' favorite part was the dolphin show....I didn't take many pictures of this but it was pretty cool to see!

Our attempt at a group picture during our picnic lunch (which was more of a snack by the time we sat down to eat since Blake had been grazing on it continuously all morning!)

I loved being able to sit back and watch my kids play.....I don't care what anyone says, boys and girls are very different!! The pictures speak for themselves!

...getting so old...

Sadie was so excited to share with me that Baby Ashley is learning to walk.....

Seeing the penguins!!!!

Blake loving on the gold penguins!

We had such a wonderful time and I love that my kids are old enough now that we can just have so much fun together!!! it's going to be a great summer. (although on a side note, I realized how unproductive I was in doing laundry, cleaning, meals, blogging, etc during this week because I was too busy having fun with the kids!! We will have to come up with a better routine this summer!)