A FREE trip to the zoo!

Our huge town has a great zoo and they are letting residents in for free during the months of Oct. and Nov. We finally got to take advantage of that today and took a little trip with Grandma, Noah and Eli. The weather was AMAZING and the zoo just makes me happy. :) Noah had the job of pushing grandma in the wheelchair and he was a wild driver with a great attitude.

We were really looking forward to meeting Nikita the Polar Bear...This is his new house.

Nikita was born on November 21, 2006 and is about to turn 5! He currently weighs over 800 pounds and enjoys about 16 pounds of fish, 5 pounds of dog food and 1.5 pounds of lard each day. He is a big boy!

He played the entire time we were there. He would swim, dive, roll, kick, bob and flip.

He would swim around the "ice berg", down to the bottom, straight towards the glass....

He would get closer and closer....

Slide along the glass to the wall that butted out a little ways...

Push off the bottom of the pool, slide his face along the glass and push up....

...arch his back a little, turn his head...

...And then push off of the glass. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THOSE PAWS!!!

He did this over and over and over...We could have stayed and watched him play for hours!

Since the weather was absolutely PERFECT, we were all in an extra good mood. And because of that great mood we stumbled upon some RARE specimens!

I think this is the Grey Monkey...

And this is the....umm...EliFur...

And the Belird...

And the most unusual and rare-ist find of the day? A DragoMary...Wow!

We also saw a baby dino hatch...

Walked along a path next to a field of FREE ROAMING kangaroos. They were so close!

This one was hiding in the bushes...next to the path. We were about 5 feet away from it.

Missed the sea lion show but watched the baby take a bath...

And another one sun himself...

And since we only stayed for 2 hours we stopped back by Nikita's house to say goodbye. He was pacing and waiting for his dinner. He was majestic and awesome!!

After our little zoo trip, Eli made us dinner from scratch, by himself! We have been cooking with the kids for years and the older boys can make entire meals now. At 11 & 12 that makes me very proud! They are always asking to cook and even though they each have a certain night to cook, they are always fighting over who gets to cook each night. It's a great problem to have! This was my plan all along...muhauahahahahah. One of our family favorites is Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato icing. Noah is the king of the cupcakes so Eli decided to make a bundt cake with mashed potato icing. This boy makes the BEST garlic mashed potatoes!

Icing the "cake"

The finished cake. Meatloaf bundt cake with mashed potato icing, cheese sprinkles and sauted brussel sprout garnish. YUM!

Now, who's coming to dinner?