Field Trip

        I bet every kid that has ever been to the Jacksonville Zoo has a picture like this! My kids have several, I think they should start a wall of fame at the zoo for all the kids pictures. I am sure many kiddos have literally grown up alongside this turtle! We really like taking the same picture at different times to see how things have changed through the years. This is the first zoo turtle picture my oldest isn't in. I didn't realize until later when looking through them that the kids still grouped together as if there were another child there. They have been a group of four and i don't think they will ever stop expecting her to be there. 

       Giraffes are one of the coolest animals ever and I love taking pictures of life size models next to my kids. It makes it seem like they are still small!!

       We stopped off at the gift shop first, we just had to hunt around!

       Then we are off to the zoo! I always think of that song, lions, tigers and bears, OH MY!!! But wait, DINOSAURS???? There were dinosaurs at the zoo!!! All of us love dinosaurs! I have no idea when I started that fascination but I have it and dinosaurs are one of my absolute favorite thing to learn about! My kids adore them no matter how old they get too. I think it was last Christmas my oldest got raptor claws for Christmas! I am going to warn you before you read further that this is picture HEAVY!! I mean HEAVY! I mean there are dinosaurs, I had to get every single second captured in some way! 

       Dinosaur digs are awesome no matter how old you are!

       Now spiders is not something we enjoy. Other than Fox we all hate spiders. This big dude seemed pretty photogenic though and was happy to take a picture with Skyler!

      
       HERE WE GO!!!!! We are entering the land of dinosaurs!!! Did I mention how much we all LOVE dinosaurs!!!

      We have been reading about Pangea forever so it was awesome to see this included in the exhibit. Pangea sounds like an amazing place to be truthful. Could you just imagine one huge land mass? I think the world would be a very different place I would hope it would be better. 

        Skyler wanted to take one of these little guys home so bad! If it is small and furry believe my child will want it as a pet!

        Fox was over the moon excited to see what he considers to be his dinosaur. The T-Rex. This has been his thing since he was tiny. He was ecstatic!!

        It is probably a good thing they aren't around anymore because I honestly see my child doing this if he had the chance. Since our field trip we have all heard multiple times per day that he hugged a T-Rex!!

       
       Skyler doesn't really have a favorite dinosaur, she pretty much just loves them all. She would also be trying to pet any were they alive today. That is my child and she will most likely get herself in some trouble one day with that need. She will try to pet something she should not be petting and it won't be too happy with her!

     
       I really like these cool billboards set up everywhere. We are going to be researching a lot of stuff next week because it is going to be all about dinosaurs!!

       I would not want to meet up with this big dude in a dark jungle!

       Hard to imagine that Antarctica was once a tropical paradise!

        Now this huge guy I have honestly never heard about before in my life. My kids were clueless as well so he is going to be another research topic!

       Look at those claws!!! It is safe to say I wouldn't want to meet up with him either!

       Skyler has read all about griffins for Magic School and never heard about this so it will be fun looking this up too!

       This is a type of raptor, Devlin adores raptors too so I got plenty of pictures for her!

    
       I knew she would also want a hello from one of her pals so we had to get that on video!

      Two monsters in a cage! I am not sure which one is worse!

   
       With that our tour of the dinosaurs ended. It was amazing. it was magical it was downright the best thing we have ever done!! I also took a video. I am not good with videos, it flips and moves quite a bit but you will still see many dinosaurs moving and making their cool RAWR sounds!!

        After the dinosaurs we visited some of the rest of the zoo and had much more fun!

       The kiddos really enjoyed sting ray bay!! I had to video that too. Damian even had a blast getting to pet one! He actually smiled!

      We had to visit the other walking giants! Elephants are amazing and just so very neat. They are also related to my favorite animal, the mammoth!

        She just had to pet everything she possibly could too!

       It was a wonderful day! Besides seeing beautiful living creatures we saw dinosaurs! They moved, they made noise and that is most likely the closest we will ever get to those creatures that lived so very long ago!