Lions, And Tigers, and Bears! Oh My!

We had a wonderful day at the Philadelphia Zoo. We got on the road about 10 this morning. It takes about an hour and a half to get there from Lakewood. It was a great day for a drive. Gorgeous weather! The trees are ready in bloom up here.

We arrived right around 11:30 just like we thought. We drove through some side streets in downtown Philly instead of using the parking lot of a highway that our GPS was telling us to use. Thank goodness we veered when we did or we would have taken another hour just to travel four more miles! We passed by the Art Museum that Sylvester Stallone runs up in the famous scene in the first ROCKY movie (link). That was a very cool thing!



The zoo was great! It was definitely more warm that we thought it was going to be today. We dressed Gideon in jeans and soon realized that it should have been a "shorts day". Oh well. He seemed okay other than a complaint of how hot it was here and there.



We saw elephants, rhino, kangaroos, hippos, polar bears, birds, marmosets, elephant shrews, alligators, cobras, and so much more. Gideon had a great time. He was very disappointed however when we were headed out of the park and the GIANT and I mean GIANT hot air balloon was not doing anymore rides for the day.


Right after we left the house this morning, I realized that I wish I had brought the address and name of the restaurant that was featured last week on Bobby Flay's Throwdown show. They make excellent varieties of grill cheese sandwiches and boy did they look good. I had a hunch that it was close to the zoo. I couldn't find anyone at the zoo that knew what I was talking about or we could have typed in the name into our GPS system and found it. When we got home I typed it into our search engine and voila! It was only 4 1/2 miles from the zoo! We will have to go back sometime and experience that shop. The menu looks amazing! They even have a menu for babies with varieties of baby food to choose from. Coolness! Oh yeah! The shop was called the Pop Shop (link)!

Gideon serenaded us with combination home-made worship/action fighter songs to and from the zoo. He was a very happy child today. When we were almost home, Kenny turned to me and told me that he loved his heart but he wished he could tell him no more. But you can't stop such cuteness and childish innocence. We loved it!

I'll try to post the pictures from the circus in a couple of days! Love You All!