houston day 2

Our first day in Houston was exhausting, so we slept pretty hard.  On Wednesday,  we decided Tyler should just take the car and park it at the conference center.  We caught the train again and went down to the Houston zoo.  It was a bit of a walk from the station, but it was a nice morning.

There were already tons of field trip groups lined up when we got there.  My mom has an Albuquerque zoo pass and I am a named card holder, so we got a 50% reciprocity discount that I was pretty excited about.  Thanks mom!

The Houston zoo was really fun because it had lots of unique animals that I have never seen before, like anteaters, bongos, and okapi.  It was a unique collection.  We didn't get to see nearly as much a I had hoped, but we still had a great visit.  How cute is that meerkat posing for a picture?

One thing that I don't love about most zoos, including Houston, is the desire for each exhibit to be an experience.  What that usually means is you end up doing alot of walking without actually seeing that many animals.  A good example of this is the elephant exhibit, which stretches over a large area because it has several elements.  The walking path goes along the entire expanse, when in reality, all three elephants were corralled in one section.  We walked and walked for 10 minute to get to the next exhibit.  It's just not a great design.

The zoo did have lots of cute photo-ops.  My kids were great sports and actually smiled and posed almost every time that I asked!

Seriously, little Eli being so sweet with the baby rhino cutout just kills me.  He is adorable.

In the children's zoo, they had a few animals out for animal encounters with the field trip kids.  We got to pet a bearded dragon, a snake, a Flemish giant rabbit (you have got to google those things, they are unbelievable.  It was the biggest rabbit I have ever seen), and my personal favorite, and armadillo.  I've never seen one before so I was super excited about it!  I think my kids liked the snake the best.

Luckily, most of the field trip groups were stopping for lunch at that point, so we got to enjoy the children's zoo mostly unencumbered by crowds.

Bald eagles and otters, both big favorites at our house.

There were some fun rope playgrounds that had signs saying you had to be 4 feet tall to enter.  They were tough, but the kids were fine.  TJ was especially proud when he managed to do all the different climbing challenges.

I thought the desert fox was so cute.  He was just sleeping right next to the glass!

I told the kids to come take a picture with him and this is what we got.  I love those goofballs.

We were getting hungry, and I'm too cheap to pay for zoo food.  During my planning I found out that there is a McDonald's in the Houston Museum of Natural History on the other side of Hermann park (which is right outside of the zoo).  They have a cute little train that goes around the park and stops right in front of the Zoo and the Museum, so we we bought day passes and rode to the museum stop.

I didn't  get a very good picture, but my kids were absolutely thrilled to be on the train.  It took every ounce of parental discipline I had to force Eli to wait until I purchased tickets to get on the train.

The natural history museum looked fun, but it was expensive and swamped with field trip groups so we just grabbed our lunch and hopped back on the train to ride around to the playground.

We played for about 45 minutes, but mostly the kids just wanted to ride the train again.

^I know it's blurry but I love this goofy Eli picture

We explored our way back to the train station.  It was such a beautiful day.  A perfect, mild summer day in February!

We rode the train back to the zoo.  We went by this weird public art - it's got to be some of the worst art I've ever seen.

They had a train tunnel that was basically a weird trip fest to drive through.

And then we were back at the zoo station!  I had hoped we could go back and see more of the zoo, but the kids were enjoying the train so much we just rode it around a few more times.

After a while TJ was begging to ride on the big train again.  We rode the little train around to the metro station.

It was a little too early to go home for dinner, so we got off at the museum district and walked to the Children's Museum again.  We went to a few places that we missed the day before, like the roof, and hit up the kids favorite kidtopia exhibits again before riding the train home.

We had tons of leftovers from Olive Garden the night before, so we just reheated them (yay for having a full kitchen!) and then went to discovery green downtown to walk around before bedtime.

It is so fun to be in the city at night.  I've always thought I would hate city life, but it was so fun being so close to everything, walking and riding the train.  Everything was so alive and exciting.  I absolutely loved it.

After getting the kids to bed, Tyler and I packed up so we would be ready to check out early the next morning.  We tidied up a bit and swept, since we were staying in someones home and wanted to leave it the way we found it.

Houston day 3