Monkeying around at the Dallas Zoo

Last Tuesday, rain or shine, I was on a bus with 100 second graders bound for the Dallas Zoo.  We had our ponchos and lunches all stuffed into J's backpack and were just praying for the rain to go away!  After the longest route imaginable, our six school buses arrived at our destination. 

And ya know what?  No rain!

My crew of three knew that they were on borrowed time.  We didn't want to waste any time and immediately headed for the African animals.

Jackson was so excited that Ben got to be in our group because he's one of his best buds at school. They were too funny together.

Can you tell which kid has had to pose for pictures since he was born?  Ha!  Ben and Krish were not that impressed with my desire to document their fun day at the zoo, but at least they stood still:)

It was a pretty cool, cloudy day, which actually made it very nice for all of the animals. 
The elephants were all roaming about...

and the giraffes were doing the same.  We were a little sad that they hadn't released the new baby giraffe just yet, but he wasn't quite ready.

This kid was SO happy that I got to chaperone his field trip--so far, so good!

My favorite of the day was getting to watch this Silverback Gorilla up close. 
He was so content just eating those leafy greens.  Very cool dude.

If these three monkeys encountered anything they could climb, they did!  They thought this cool safari jeep was pretty neat.

They also were pretty impressed with the two female lions.

Such an amazing animal!

Wait!  What's that?  Another thing we can climb?  Yes ma'am.

 

My crew also thought these crocodiles were really cool, too.

After leaving the crocs, we stumbled upon perhaps the ugliest and least scary creature at the zoo--the opossum!  Seriously, it's so unfortunate looking and was just shaking with fright the whole time this lady was holding it. 

It started to rain, so we found a table underneath an umbrella and ate lunch.  Then we broke out the ponchos and headed to the other side of the zoo.

 

We found the pretty flamingos, but these three were unimpressed with them...

I just love looking at this habitat, though, so we checked it out for a few seconds.

We saw a few monkeys swinging around and then came across these beautiful birds.  I bought some coconut water for us to feed them.  Before we went in the girl warned me that they were probably pretty hungry and might be aggressive.  She sure was right--they flew over to us immediately and began eating from our paper cups.

Then this happened!  I was so surprised that J didn't holler and jump back when this bird flew up onto his head!

As I was trying to document the hilariousness of a bird being on Jackson's head, another bird landed on my hand.  They were kind of crazy birds, but it was my favorite thing we did all day!

We left the birds and went to see the adorable koala bears.  Then were found this beautiful tiger.  He was pacing back and forth, looking very ready for his next meal.

After that, we made our way over to the Children's Zoo and the Dinosaur exhibit. 
It was really neat!  They had gigantic dinos everywhere...

and even a train that took the boys through Dallas' very own Jurassic Park.

Jackson took the camera and documented all of the cool dinosaurs--he's so my child!

T-Rex looked pretty fierce...

as did Triceratops...

and spiky Stegosaurus.

He even took a selfie of him and Ben!  Cracks me up.

Pretty soon the train was pulling back into the station--goodbye T-Rex!

Hi Mom!

Cristi and I collected our six boys...

and made our way over the kid area, where all my three monkeys did was leap over the rocks!

And climb on this huge spiderweb, too.

 

Before we knew it, we had to get back to the bus.  They climbed one last rock structure...

and then we met the class at the entrance.  It was a great day with my oldest and his friends. 
A BiG hit for sure!