Zoo Trip

Today (Friday) Kate and I met my sister and her family down in Denver for a few hours at the Denver Zoo.



Kate and I arrived a little early so we took the opportunity to check out the wolf exhibit...




...and some of the reptiles...





Aw, don't those skinks look so cute cuddled up like that? :-)

When Dianna, Heath, and the kids arrived, we got ourselves organized and headed out, stopping first by the lion exhibit.



Julie volunteered to be in charge of the map. Here she shows us where we are (the lion exhibit obviously)...



And here she compares one of the big "You Are Here" maps to her own carried one...



Everest seemed to have fun too. Here's a few pix of him with his Aunt Kate...

Having some lunch...



Posing by the water buffalo statues...



And looking at the duck pond...



Later, the kids and even the adults (sans me who shot pictures instead) took a ride on the carousel!




After the carousel, Everest was pointing out the safari train that rolled by - didn't get a picture of it though...



Though he did keep calling the train a "bus." :-)

At one point, Julie spotted a tiny little mouse snooping around...



...and Everest tried to feed it some of his snacks. :-)



Another fun time was when Dianna and I took Everest in to visit the lorikeets...



Dianna bought some nectar to feed the lorikeets, who lapped the stuff up!



Other cool animals that we saw included a coatl...



A grizzly bear...



A kangaroo (napping)...



And an elephant...



Now for some rapid fire pictures of us at the zoo...









After the zoo, we stopped in at a pizzeria that Emily recommended to Kate, called Pasquini's.



I'd say the show-stealer there was the massive calzones that Kate and Dianna ordered. They were huge - way bigger than either of them realized! :-)



Everest had his first taste of bruschetta with tomatoes and cheese.



And I guess we'll finish up with a picture of me and Julie at the restaurant...



Keep an eyeball out on my YouTube channel too! I made a number of videos of various animals while we were there and I'm hoping to get 'em posted on YouTube sometime soon.

As always, thanks for reading and hope you're having a great day!

Visit Last Weekend

Okay, a little slow on the updates again. I'm going to try out the scheduled posting thing and go ahead and write up a couple of updates today. We'll see how it works out. :-)

This post I wanted to share some pictures of my Mom, my sister, and my nephew's visit with me and Kate last weekend. They weren't able to stay really long but it was great to see them anyway. They came up on Friday night - which unfortunately was when we'd planned to have our monthly Library Game Night. It turned out not to be a problem, though. Dianna joined us for the gathering while Mom watched over Everest back at the hotel. We managed to get in two (count 'em, TWO) games during the evening, namely Apples to Apples and Wise and Otherwise. A couple of our guests had to leave a little early but a couple of us nonetheless managed to stay up later than we should have. Stil, a good time appeared to have been had by all.

The next day (Saturday) Dianna and Mom brought Everest over to our place. We chatted and let Everest play with some toys we keep upstairs. Everest seemed to enjoy himself quite bit.





My Dad gave us a call that morning to chat for a bit so Everest got to talk to his grandpa a little too.



Afterwards, we headed out to Old Town Fort Collins for lunch. On Dianna's suggestion, we went to Hu Hot, a popular Mongolian grill style restaurant there in Old Town. It's one of my favorites and I'm glad that Mom and Dianna enjoyed themselves too.






After lunch, we wandered around Old Town for a little while. There was a jazz music event going on as well as a big sidewalk sale for most of the downtown stores so we definitely wandered and browsed for a bit. Then we stopped for some dessert at Gelazzi, the gelato shop in Old Town.








After Gelazzi, Mom and Dianna decided to head back home so that they wouldn't be getting in too late. Kate and I kicked back for the rest of the night with a game of Lego Indiana Jones. :-)

It was a lot of fun! Thank to Mom and Dianna for making time for the visit!

And as always, thanks for reading! Hope you're having a great day!