Our Saturday Trip to Ark Avilon Zoo

 The building was built to look like Noah's ark

 Scott with the white tiger

 All the kids meeting Jenny the orangutan

 A snake long enough for all of us to help hold-Ashley wasn't scared, just didn't look very happy in this picture.

 Ryan loves turtles and wanted his picture made with this one

 Tiger naptime

 Another picture with Jenny-Ryan said he didn't like the way her fur felt so he wouldn't be in this one

 Scott is feeding the guinea pigs a carrot on a stick-they were hungry

 Now Ryan wanted to do it and they had bunnies in their too

 Ashley laughed when the goats would take leafy greens out of her hand

 Playing on the playground

 We didn't just feed the animals

 Scott would have stayed inside with the guinea pigs and rabbits all afternoon

 Scott was holding a very loud macaw

 Ryan held a sun conure

 Scott took pictures of me holding an owl and this other large bird-it was really heavy and I had to wear a glove on my arm

Here is Ryan holding one more of the birds

This morning we went to the Ark Avilon Zoo http://arkavilonzoo.weebly.com/.  It was amazing-the kids loved how interactive it was.

We met an orangutan named Jenny who was wearing purple pants and blue crocs on her feet.  Ashley gave her a hug and she held our hands.

My mother would have been twitching and squealing in terror because the four of us sat on a bench and held a snake so long that Ashley had the tail and I had the head-it was very long-yes I have a picture of this.

We saw a white tiger, a sun bear, a puma, a jaguar, lots of fish, turtles, various lizards.  I held an owl on my arm with a glove and another larger and heavier bird of prey.  The boys held some smaller birds-a large blue macaw and sun conures (that are yellow and orange and we have seen in a cage at the Greenville zoo).

We fed carrots to rabbits and guinea pigs and leafy greens to goats, sheep, and pigs.  To watch Ashley feed animals was hilarious.  We were hot and they had ice cream there so we couldn't pass that up-doesn't everyone eat ice cream before lunch?  It was Saturday.  Scott and Ryan chose their ice cream bars and Ashley was looking into the cooler saying "I want a PINK one!"  So she ate a strawbery flavored one.  Does anyone know of any healthy pink vegetables?  Maybe I could get her to eat those better.

It was a good trip-I can't wait to add those pictures.  There is another zoo affiliated with this one (called Avilon Zoo) that is the largest zoo in the Philippines that also looks like a very neat place to visit.  I think we'll save that one to do with Greg sometime.  It was also fun that as we were getting ready to leave we ran into a family with 2 boys that go to school with Scott and Ryan.  Greg would laugh and say that (just like my dad) I can't go anywhere-even thousands of miles from home-and not run into someone that I know.

On a side note, as we were driving home we could see the airport from the expressway and you would have thought my children had never seen airplanes before.  Granted Greenville has a very small airport but they enjoyed watching the planes which looked very large because they were so close and our driver was even kind enough to drive very slowly so they could look at the ones on the ground.  This was the airport we flew into but it was late and dark the night we landed so they really haven't had a chance to see much of the airport.