Fun at the Zoo

While we were in Seattle this last weekend, Bella and I hit the zoo for a few hours while we were waiting for Andrew to get done with his day of conferencing. As could be expected for a March day in Seattle, it rained. But we came prepared with hats and jackets. As it turns out, I've spent too much time on this side of the mountains and I've managed to forget that hats and jackets don't quite cut it in a Pacific Coast rain. But, we managed to enjoy ourselves all the same and had a great time running from one sheltered exhibit to another. It was actually quite fantastic because there was hardly anyone else there (all the natives were smart and stayed home), so it was easy to get front row seats for everything. One drawback though was that I didn't get a whole lot of pictures because I didn't want to get my camera wet. But here's a few of the ones that I did get...

Here's the giant spider that they had in the bug exhibit, sans glass. Yes, there was no glass separating this large flesh-eating monster from my child. Creepy creepy creepy. (Okay, so it wasn't really flesh eating, but any spider that's that size should be behind at least 2 feet of glass.)


Here is Bella, cheerfully dipping her fingers in the rain water on her tray and sucking it off of her fingers. Notice how her jacket and the stroller canopy are both soaked. I should mention that Bella was incredibly tolerant of the wet and didn't fuss at all while we were at the zoo (I think she was actually too tired to).


And here's the tiger who roared at Bella. The sun came out here (15 minutes before the zoo closed and we had to leave, of course), so I was able to get a few shots of the big guy.


Last but not least, here's Bella konked out in her car seat after a long afternoon at the zoo.