Brookfield Zoo

Aunt Donna called last week, asking if we’d like to join her & Emma for a day at the zoo.  We’d missed Emma’s birthday party due to a sick baby, and Emma had been pretty sad about that.  She was hoping to spend a fun day with her cousins.  Of course, we said yes!

Alex had been to the St. Louis Zoo when he was about 6 months old, but that’s the only zoo trip we’ve ever taken with kids.  He wasn’t sure what to expect at Brookfield other than, “I will see an-mals.  I want to see fishies.”

Aunt Donna took some great pictures today!  My camera is nearing death, I think, and every picture I took with zoom was blurry.  Sigh.  Thank goodness for Aunt Donna’s photography!

The primate house was nearly empty!  The South America exhibit had NO animals.  The Asia exhibit had 1 baboon and one hippo.  The Africa exhibit was a little better, thank goodness!  Alex enjoyed watching the gorillas eating lunch.

Aunt Donna got some pictures of a few other monkeys while we were there…
   

This was the best picture that we got of the 3 kids together.  Alex was just too distracted to look at a camera on command!           

Alex’s favorite – the fish

Aunt Donna’s favorite – penguins.  They weren’t very active at the time, though.

Emma’s favorite – although ALL of us totally LOVED this exhibit – the new Stingray Bay.  It’s a shallow pool filled with stingrays.  You can touch them as they swim by, and once in a while a stingray will jump out of the water and splash you!

Poor Alex – his arms weren’t quite long enough to touch the stingray.  We put him close enough to the water to get his sleeves wet, but the only way he could have reached the stingray was to put his head in or hang him over the water by his toes…not very smart options! ;)  He still had fun running his hands through the water & watching the stingrays swim by.

We spent about an hour in here, and we could have stayed longer if we didn’t have tickets for the dolphin show.

Alex liked watching the dolphins.  The new, “improved” dolphin show was actually rather short and dull compared to what it used to be.  Donna, Emma, and I were disappointed.  Alex had no clue that it could have been better, and he enjoyed himself!

The splash fountains outside of the aquarium…Alex wasn’t so sure about this, and Emma had to talk him into splashing in the very smallest fountain.  He refused to go near the larger ones!

 

We found a few more “monkeys” for Alex to enjoy. Max hung in there for as long as he could, but eventually, he had to sleep…

And all good things must come to an end…we had to head for home.

Poor Emma had a headache, and she felt miserable in the car on the way home.  We got stuck in traffic for a bit, and my poor sweet niece sat in the back of our car just crying.  I felt so sorry for her, as there was nothing I could do except get her home.  Hopefully, the day was enjoyable enough that she’ll remember the good stuff!

Honestly, this zoo seems to be in need of some cleaning & repairs.  It’s not as nice as we remember it!  We still had fun, but Donna & I were both surprised at the condition of some of the hands-on exhibits and the cleanliness of the zoo.  We had a GREAT day, though, and I’m glad we got to spend some fun times with Donna & Emma!