Heidelberg Zoo

Today we drove up to Heidelberg to check out their zoo. This is the last 'Out and About' with our ward for the summer. I have LOVED going to new and fun places with new and fun friends from church. Today just the Spangenbergs, Thompsons and those cool Burkes came. Small in number but mighty in spirit, we drove the hour+ drive without any problems. We figured out their parking system and how to pay for it. That alone in Germany is a huge feat. Upon entering the zoo, the kids went straight for the playground. But, I thought we were here to see animals? We could have gone 5 minutes to a park near our house, but we drove all this way to see some lions, and tigers and bears, Oh My! Right? Uh, no, we came here to play on playgrounds 60% of the time, eat snacks 30% of the time and see animals 10% of the time. Oh well. As long as the kids are happy. Which they were, MOST of the time, until the end when the crankies reared their ugly head and bit my middle two kids. There was a little (or a lot) of whining going around, which I told them was against the Word of Wisdom, but to no avail. They continued to whine. Here they are at the first of three playgrounds we found:











Here's Mason with a new friend who turned out to be quite a 'boar':

The rabbit and guinea pig cage was amazing. There was a whole village for the little guys, with buildings, a clock tower, and church. The kids loved petting the bunnies through the cage.
"Can we have a bunny?"
"Ah choo! Ah choo! Uh, no, sorry..."




Here they are in front of some goats and monkeys. Which ones are the monkeys? The three in front!!



No zoo experience is complete until we find the petting zoo, this time in the form of a goat pen. There was an escapee goat that did not want to return to the pen but stay permanently fixed next to the goat food vending machine, making it virtually impossible to obtain those little pellets to feed his neighbors. Here's Mason trying to feed a goat with a baggie of food, that was ripped out of his hand and quickly consumed as soon as I snapped this shot.



The camels were a huge hit because it was feeding time and they were getting excited for some chow. We saw some run and gallop for a little bit.


Here's playground number two, which included water in its experience. Have you noticed that Mason had already taken his shoes off after being in the zoo for about two minutes? So now that water was around, the level of fun was just elevated from mild to moderate.




Here's playground number three:

which was visited right after consuming some of these:


Mason fell asleep on the way home. He woke up right in time to say, "Hey, we're almost to my house!"
We had spaghetti for dinner, and since Mason is a HUGE beigeatarian when it comes to food (plain food, no sauces, spices, flavor, etc) he dove into his plate of 'clean pasta', literally:



And, although I know that the quality of these photos is less than stellar (it is too hard to carry around a big camera with everything else required for a day trip), can you tell that Mason has a red mark on his cheek? He got stung by a bee at the zoo! There were tons of bees flying around us all day, and at one point he started crying and saying his cheek hurt. Then we noticed the mark on his face. So, logical deduction: bee sting. Darn those bees.