Animal Planet

Okay, I know. I've been absent for a while.

Let's call it a blog sabbatical.

Sometimes there's just too much other junk going on in my head for me to put any energy into this. This month has definitely been a landfill for my mind. So, forgive my tardiness.

Moving on.

A few weeks ago we headed up to Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. Karen and the girls have visited it before, but this was my first time.

I'm not a huge fan of zoos. Both Karen and I often come away simply feeling sorry for the animals. Too much cuteness. Too little space. Too many bars. Not always an awe-inspiring excursion. But, we had a free day, the kids were out of school and the weather was perfect. So we headed up along with our good friends the Fuchs (minus their Dad, who did not have the day off), because anything is always more fun when you have friends along.Since it was a day off school, pretty much everybody and their third uncle once removed was at the zoo. Fortunately the zoo is big enough that it never felt crazy or uncomfortable. Kind of like a trekkie convention if the only cast members that show up for autographs and photo ops are two of the nameless red shirts who always die when they first go down to the planet. You know, a crowd, but not a crowd. And no one was dressed up as a Klingon. Although the peccaries did bear a slight resemblance to them.

Back to the zoo.There were giraffes. And an adorable baby elephant named Zuri.
She's only 2 months old here. Who knew an infant elephant could be so cute?Just over 300 pounds of adorable chunkiness, wrapped in wrinkled gray leather.

And we also discovered that Anya has the arm span of a mama orangutan. Go figure.

We had to snap a pic outside the special Madagascar exhibit.
We LOVE that movie. It's ridiculous how much we quote it. Especially King Julian the Lemur.

Shortly after the above pic, Jenna began to feel ill. Desperately wilty. She looked like chocolate bar that's been left in the car in July. Positively gooey. Droopy even. So she and I went to the van and chillaxed, while the rest of the crew caught up on all the caged animals.

She survived, by the way. Although it was the beginning of some flu variant that slowly crept its way through all three girls over the next two weeks.

Let's call it the peccary flu.