It's all happening at the zoo

We took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and our family membership to the Milwaukee County Zoo and headed there on the final day of Grandma and Grandpa Gregg's visit.  For the first time, we decided to check out the Northwestern Mutual Family Farm, which is supposed to give kids the chance to get up-close to farm animals and the like.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that they stop the animal presentations and close the goat yard at Labor Day.  It was October 10, well after Labor Day. Bummer. 

We did get to see a few cows, and they had a section set up with farm vehicles and the like that Jonah just loved:

Look at me! It's a red tractor, Grandpa Gregg!

Taking Grandma Gregg for a ride.

The milk truck is cool, but not nearly as cool as the tractor.

While the weather was quite nice, many of the animals were indoors.  We did get to see all of the beautiful giraffes (Jonah was more interested in the waterfall that is a part of their habitat),

and the rhino,

and the camel was fun to watch wade in the water.

We also enjoyed seeing the penguins, which we make a point to visit every time we are at the zoo, partially because they are a personal favorite of mine, and partially because they have so many of them and they are always doing something that is interesting for a toddler to see.

We got quite the show from an adult monkey playing with some babies, and saw pretty much all of the primate house as well.  One of the final stops was to visit the same statue that Jonah posed with on his first visit to the zoo, when he was all happy and excited about it.  This time around, he was not one bit interested in posing with the statue (my, how quickly things change)!

I don't want my picture with this guy (I'm talking about Grandpa G.)!

We left the zoo around noon, and not really a moment too soon, as Jonah was falling asleep on the way home.  After a failed attempt to eat lunch (too tired!), we just put him down for a nice, long nap.  It's so hard to gauge how long he can tolerate outings like this!

We certainly got our money's worth from our zoo pass in these last six months; it has to be one of the best values around.  I'm not sure whether we'll really go in the winter, but seeing as it doesn't really cost us anything more, perhaps a visit to some of the indoor exhibits will be worthwhile (and a good excuse to get out of the house).