Zoo Atlanta in February

It's interesting that when you live somewhere for a long time, you don't take advantage of all your home town has to offer.  At least we don't.  I know other people that are so resourceful, always proactive in finding fun things to do.  We wait to go on vacation to see all the cool things about somewhere else instead of fully taking advantage of what we have right in front of us.  Our friends, the Moore's called and told us that if we checked out a specific Atlanta Zoo video at the library, they would give us 4 free tickets to the zoo upon our returning it.  Apparently, this is something that has always been in effect for a long time but we had no idea and it's hard to get the video because everyone is always trying to check it out.  Well, our friends had just returned it and now it was free to go and grab.  We felt super lucky and then planned our trip to the zoo with our friends.

We started off looking at these sweet little birds in the bird house.  Here is Tabitha and Emma Moore, Christiana and Eliza.

  

We saw so many amazing animals.  Most of them were out and easy to see.  

The gorillas were some of our favorite.  We sat and watched them for a long time.  They were so funny with so much personality.  One little one was playing with some grassy brush and wrapping it around his neck and putting it on his head like he was the king.  When it kept falling off his head, he decided to pull a root out of the ground (it took him a minute to get it out, but he kept trying) and then proceeded to swing it around like a sword.  He was so entertaining!  The big gorillas would carry the little ones on their backs and some of them just like to chill.  We could have watched them all day!

Our favorite was the panda.  He was so adorable.  He would just sit there and eat bamboo.  He was pretty close to the glass where we were watching him and seemed plenty comfortable with all those eyes just on him.  

I love this picture of all the girls lined up to take his picture.  I call it the Panda Paparazzi!

Emma came to the zoo when she was 8 years old, she was given permission to buy one souvenir and had picked out this cute stuffed panda.  Her mom Pricilla told her that she might want to keep looking and then decide for sure once the day was over.  Sure enough she still wanted the panda.  When they went back to get it, the store had closed.  I know Pricilla probably had to hear about it the rest of the  way home and for days maybe weeks to come.  So now at this zoo trip she finally got her panda!!!!!  Oh happy day!  Eliza LOVES pandas, but since she had so many stuffed pandas at home she decided on the little red panda since she was completely enamored with the live version.  It was our first time seeing one. They are absolutely precious.  Much smaller than a normal panda and with a little pointier ear and a long and fluffy tail like a raccoon.  When we saw him/her she was in a hammock up way high between a couple of trees.

The tiger was way cool!  He was huge.  An incredible animal!

If you look close, you can see the lions between Christiana and Tabitha.  Their manes were much shorter than we expected because they were young and their hair had not grown in fully.  We all thought someone chopped their manes off.  Haha!  Shows how much we know!

Lunchtime!  I don't know what it is, but walking around the zoo makes you really hungry.  Eliza and I were wanting everyone's leftover food!

I guess your never too old for a carousel ride.  They all wanted to do this before we left the zoo.

I

Great ways to finish up our winter break and perfect time to go to the zoo.  Not too cold and not too hot.  Thanks to the Moore's for a fun day at Zoo Atlanta.