San Diego Zoo

Jill's Journal: It’s an elephant pedicure! Seriously.

For nearly a century, the San Diego Zoo has enthralled visitors to Southern California with a stunning array of wildlife. Consistently ranked at the very top of zoos in the U.S., the San Diego Zoo covers 100 acres and boasts over 4,000 animals of over 800 species. It’s also one of the most progressive zoos in the world, having pioneered such innovations as cageless exhibits. It is also one of only four U.S. zoos approved to loan giant pandas from China and has a successful panda breeding program (all surviving baby pandas must eventually be sent back to China).

April and Cat joined the girls and me yesterday for an absolutely wonderful day at the Zoo. And actually, they didn’t just join us…April has annual passes to the Zoo and had free tickets for all four of us! That was an amazing and fantastic treat and surprise; needless to say, we bought lunch. We were there from opening until closing, making it a long day, but we had such a great time together.

I’m convinced April missed her calling and should ditch her travel career for a new life as a zookeeper. Now I love animals and our girls love animals, but April brings a love of wild animals to a whole ‘nother level. To the average person (me included!), a dozen different types of antelope all start to look alike. The same goes for bears that are black. Not to April. She could rattle off the names and many specifics of each species we passed without batting an eye. It was impressive, to say the least.

Our girls absolutely love Cat. My only complaint is that there’s only one of her. My girls displayed plenty of good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry as they all wanted her attention. Cat never has to doubt her popularity as long as these sisters are around!

Humorously, one of the highlights for all four of the little girls was baby ducks. Giant pandas, elephants, giraffes, meerkats, tapirs? Nah. Baby ducks. April and I got a good laugh out of that.

Exquisite animals, beautiful weather, fantastic company. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Natural Pony Behavior and a Zoo

Jill's Journal: I was awakened this morning by Madelyn exclaiming, “Ponies! Look! Lots and lots of ponies!” We just don’t get sick of them. They’re constantly milling around and we are fascinated by their natural behavior.

We’ve seen two stallions clashing on more than one occasion, with one trying to steal what appears to be a 2-year-old filly from the other’s herd. We can now identify the lead mares. We’ve seen them all “chatting” around the figurative water cooler. And it’s so interesting how unaffected these wild horses are by people. They show humans complete indifference, just as a domesticated horse would ignore a bird or cat in his paddock. One night Rob and I were sitting outside enjoying a cool beverage after the girls were in bed. A herd came trotting through our campsite, one getting so close he brushed Rob. I’ve never seen a regular horse disrespect personal space like that -- these guys know they own the island! Fascinating stuff.

Yesterday while Rob dealt with some of the RV battery issues, I took the girls off the island to see some different animals at the Salisbury Zoo, about half an hour away. It was hot there too, but the car’s air conditioner on the way sure felt good! It was the perfect little zoo for my girls’ ages. Just 13 acres, with lots of interesting smaller animals (they especially adored the playful river otters and prairie dogs), and free! Can’t beat that.

Lightbulb at the Library

Jill's Journal: My girls are voracious readers, but strangely, we’ve spent very little time at the library. We’ve always bought them books, mostly because then they are available to be enjoyed over and over (and over) again. And, with three kids so close in age, it made sense to build a children’s library. It never dawned on me to borrow books, which is strange as I spent many, many hours at the library as a child with my own mother. But, I’ve recently rediscovered this wonderful resource and in the last month, I got the first library card I’ve held in probably close to 25 years.

We checked out four books in our first visit and the girls thought it was pretty much the neatest thing they’d ever seen. We returned them today and left with another 19. When I told the girls we were heading to the library, there was much celebrating in the land. I cannot even express how excited they were – literally bouncing off the walls and acting like we were going someplace so supremely special, like Disneyland or the zoo!

And then we checked out the books and the girls could not wait to be strapped into their car seats so they could delve into the titles on the ride home…and they could not even bear the wait to start reading together at home.

Their reaction pleased me greatly. (It also made me smack myself on the forehead for not utilizing the library earlier in my parenting years!) And it gave me an epiphany. The Sonlight homeschool program is based so heavily in reading, something they love so deeply, that it gave me even more of an assurance it’s the right program for us. I’m so excited about it! Rob still needs to be convinced, however…