Day 2: The Zoo

Today's festivities included making homemade pizza and heading to the zoo. And I'll be the first to tell you that the homemade pizza was the highlight of the day.

I feel like I could write an editorial for the newspaper citing all the ways the Kansas City Zoo is lacking. It was unbelievably heartbreaking to me what a letdown it really was. Upon walking in there are plants and buildings, a carousel, the birds, all kinds of things and then, that's it. I'm serious. It is a humongous walking trail with a wild animal here and there. At one point Maggie just looked at me and said, "well I guess at least we got some exercise."

Part of the reason I wanted to take her to the zoo is for the magic of seeing real, up close and personal animals. I wanted her eyes to light up and for her to smile and point and gasp. Maybe that would've happened, maybe it wouldn't have but to be honest there were never any moments of wonder or awe. It was boring and we barely saw a few snakes and a gorilla. Every time we passed a fan blowing water though, she squealed with delight and ran up to it. That was sad to me, that a wet fan could spark such enthusiasm at a zoo.

We got some great pictures, a little sun, and some good exercise. And maybe we learned a little lesson about paying for second rate attraction when there are two great ones (St. Louis, Omaha) a short enough distance away that we should've just saved up and used our fare for gas money.

Overall it was a good day, even if the zoo wasn't all that exciting. We stayed in our jammies until lunch time and we had some great pizza. We got to get ice cream and play with the cute baby (if I do say so myself). We enjoyed each other's company, played some Wii and had a nice dinner together. I just wish we would've gone to the dinosaur thing at Union Station; they had air conditioning!

Notice the elephants in the background? Yeah, that's as much as we saw too.

Here's Maggie at the end of the day. It was hot and we did a lot of walking. Can you tell?