Knoxville Zoo

Saturday morning, we took Lauren to the zoo for the first time. She is sooo "into" animals right now, so this was her kind of trip! We ventured our way into Knoxville (on a Saturday that TN had a HOME football game) but we didn't run into too much traffic!

The Knoxville Zoo is pretty big and we thought it was really nice. We stared out with the birds (Lauren pointed to them and said "oh, oh"...it was pretty funny.)

checking out the penguins

We avoided the kids indoor play area (although it was cool...you could dress up as a vet, and they had a "pizza parlor" and all kinds of other areas for dramatic play- but we didn't want Lauren to get all the yummy germs that were probably all over that stuff, and besides, we were here for the animals!!) and made our way to the butterfly house.

There was watermelon and cantaloupe in these bowls for the butterflies!

Jason, the "butterfly whisperer"

Then we saw some giraffes (my fave) and a big gorilla (that was sitting right next to the glass when we got there!)

Lauren got to "drive" the zoo jeep (you can imagine how much fun it was to drag her away from that!)

We saw some turtles and then took some more posed pictures! :)

Finally, we got on the carousel at the kid's area. (well, Lauren and I did, anyway)

If you have been following my blog, you already know that Lauren is a afraid of everything, so the carousel was no exception. In fact, she wouldn't even ride on one of the animals, I stood and held her the whole time! Oh, well, maybe next time she'll like it! I always loved the carousel when I was little, and just knew that she would, too. But I should have known better! :)

We had a great time at the zoo and Lauren fell asleep as soon as we got in the car. That evening, she started running a fever (103.1 at one point!) But we gave Motrin and lots of fluids, and she seems to be doing better. She never acted "sick", she just had fever and pretty much refused to eat until today. We think she's on the mend!