Beating the Heat

Summer Break is somewhere around half way over already.  I remember Summer lasting a bit longer when I was younger but that must be the way of the world. 

In typical Iowa fashion, the weather has been wretchedly hot and humid lately.  Thanks to the weird arctic thing going on in the area currently, the hubby and I took the minions to the zoo earlier today.  It was nice to not wilt immediately after stepping outside.

Our Zoo is rather miniscule, especially when compared to the Omaha Zoo and the Brookfield Zoo, but ours makes for a simple short outing.  We've gone so many times that the minions sort of breeze through it now so I am undecided as to whether or not I want to renew our Family Membership.  We'll see.

Here are some shots of our outing.

 

This swan was giving me the eye...

 

 

The color/lighting combo was rather odd in certain areas. This pond is overgrown with algae and whatnot but there were frogs abound. It reminded me of a watercolor painting.

 

 

They must be getting ready to clean the water in the sea lion/seal area - it was very green today.  In general, I prefer the open exhibits where you're not viewing the animals through cages. I get that that can't always happen, but it made getting a shot of the vulture that had its eyes on little miss (she must have looked like a tasty morsel) rather hard to get. The way vultures move around just cracks me up; it's so weird. This one was also a bit of a show-off.

 

 

The hubby and I hadn't been to the zoo as recently as the minions so we hadn't seen some of the newer exhibits yet. The minions wanted to show us the rhinos. This one was a bit shy and didn't want to come outside right away but he ventured out eventually.

 

 

On our way out the hubby and I agreed that the accidental (or planned, we have no idea which) leaf prints in the concrete walkway were rather fun.

 

It has been so muggy out lately that the minions have been spending their time enjoying the sprinkler. Little man has even set it up to where he is practicing his baseball while the sprinkler is going; he stands by the sprinkler and throws/pitches to his pitch-backs and stays cooler than he would otherwise. We've gone through a lot of towels lately...

 

Little man's finger is healing up nicely.  He's back to playing ball (obviously) and is doing a nice job of keeping it clean and dry - when he's not in the sprinkler that is ;)