The Baldwin Clan: Spring Break Visit from the Smith's

To our delight, the Smith family decided to come to Colorado for their Spring Break!

One of the days we went to the zoo together, after which they stayed the night at our place before heading back up north for the remainder of their week.

Here are some pictures of the zoo!

First off, no- this is not a real lion- but the kids thought the lego lion was pretty awesome :)

There was a brand new baby giraffe, too! So tiny and wobbly.

Dallin was either strapped to me or sleeping in the wagon the majority of the day, so he missed out on most of the sibling shots like this one... but the other 3 are doing some great growing!

Check out the otter! He just left his swimming fun to make sure his burrow was still good :)

Here's why the pictures are... well secondary to the other thing hanging from my neck today!

The kids loved the tropical discovery building!

Even Cora :) - as long as she was being held!- feel the burn yet, mommy?

Levi was really intrigued by this giant fish blubbing at him through the glass.

(Again, sorry for the blurry pictures- Dallin is getting quite grabby!)

Here's by gorgeous little princess... sometimes it kills me how cute she is!

The Komodo Dragon also took quite an interest in Levi, who was rather uncomfortable with it and after a lengthy stare down announced to me, "Mom, I think we should be done looking at him. I don't like him."

Nathan, who has become quite the Harry Potter fan, was rather intrigued with this huge snake statue!

They also had these awesome robotic dinosaurs that moved and made sounds.

The kids were all trying to remind themselves that he was not real... not sure how well it worked!

Hannah got to carry around a camera for a bit and LOVED taking pictures of all the animals!

My little shutter bug wanted me to take a picture of her taking a picture of me... so here it is!

Guess I just found a great use for one of my older (non-DSLR) digital cameras :)

Everyone wanted to take a turn hearing like an elephant...

Levi needed a little boost to get up there! Thanks, Nathan.

The penguins were out and about, and one of the highlights for all of us!

Nathan pretended to be throwing something into the water and these two came over hoping to get at whatever it was before everyone else found out about it :)

He was quite proud of himself.

Here's a picture Sharon snapped of our crew stopped for lunch!

I didn't take any because Dallin kept trying to reach off the table and I knew if I moved we'd be in trouble!

Bird world was another big hit!

Look at these cute girls (none of which are looking at me because I sniped Sharon's picture!)

I loved this tiny little guy with such vibrant colors!

GQ shot for my big second grader!

We got free tickets to ride the carousel with our membership- so we thought we'd give it a whirl!

Levi started out wanting to ride the Zebra, his favorite animal he'd seen thus far...

Here are Hannah and Eve all ready to go!

And Nathan started out on a panda...

but shortly decided to change to a hyena that was closer to where Levi and I ended up relocating to.

After feeling too anxious about riding and animal that moved Levi tried to convince me to let him get off... but after a little coaxing her consented to riding in the sleigh with me.

Selfies make everything better!

After our ride everyone started loosing their umphf, so I wound up wearing a sleeping giant baby on my front and hauling a wagon full of 3 big kids back to the front of the zoo!

On our way out I drug the wagon through one last exhibit to see the new baby gorilla and I'm so glad I did! It was so fun to see this baby and his mama interacting :) And perhaps all too familiar!

(e.g. The mama was trying to eat and the baby kept reaching up and whacking the food away from her mouth, then poking her trying to get her to look at him, as if to say, "Mom! Mom! Look at me? Did you see me? Did you? Did you?" And then swinging around on the rope right next to them.)