Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

I wanted to share some pics of our fun times in Texas last week. Two of our exciting adventures included the Dallas Children's Aquarium and the Dallas Zoo.

     On Monday (2/21) Richard and Cindy took the girls to a Children's Aquarium in downtown Dallas. I was feeling under the weather and spent much of the day recovering from our travel the day prior. Upon their return the girls shared stories of getting to pet sting rays and handling crabs. Apparently on command from a trainer the sting rays raised their flippers and splashed the crowd! Richard tried to feed one. Because their mouths are on the underside of their bodies they cannot see what they are eating. Apparently their mouth is like a vacuum and along with the sting ray food Richard's finger was pulled up into its mouth. Despite feeling the sting ray's teeth, he did manage to come home with all 10 fingers intact :)
     On Tuesday (2/22) we all went to the Dallas Zoo. Corey and I had actually visited this zoo years back before we had the girls. Much of it seemed the same except for a new "Giants of the Savanna" exhibit. Abi and Ali were really excited about taking the train/subway to get there. Out of all the animals I think the highlight was seeing the giraffes. The exhibit allowed you to get at just about eye level with the lanky animals, as their grazing area was about 12 feet below the viewing area. We were able to feed them some grass, and I was even able to pet one of them on the nose. Man do they have long tongues!

The zoo also had many pewter statues of different animals that the girls had fun climbing on. They made for some great photo ops.

More pics to come...I'm working on uploading some now to my Picasa web albums...it's taking a little while...