61 and sunny in january?!

what?  crazy warm for this time of year and we were not going to spend it indoors.  we weren't the only ones who thought of going to the zoo either - it was packed.  mainly it was packed when we went to find a table to eat lunch in the cafe - more on that in a minute.

i let maddux walk the majority of the time again.  he does such a great job of staying with us and coming right back when called.  we have even been working on holding hands in the parking lot and i would say that he is doing better than madelyn and mason did when we first started (i.e. i don't have to pick him up because he pulls away from me).  for some reason madelyn was very focused on maddux and 'helping' him walk to the next exhibit.

i should have taken video of this part, but madelyn was assisting maddux to the exhibit and telling him about the snow leopard while mason was running back and forth as the snow leopard paced in the exhibit.

and then we made it to the cafe for lunch.  it was very crowded and after looking around for a while i realized that all of the highchairs were taken.  so i just had maddux 'sit' in a regular chair.  what was a little frustrating is the table next to us had two highchairs and at least one of the children was closer to mason's age than maddux'.  not only that, but the boy was not sitting in the highchair but going through our stroller instead! and the two women at his table didn't say a single thing. now, i really should have just asked for the highchair they weren't using (maddux was having a difficult time sitting in the chair because it was open in back and his feet kept sliding back and getting stuck) but i didn't.  later in our meal maddux fell out of the chair and bit his tongue.  it bled quite a bit and i was wearing a white shirt.  thankfully, it wasn't very bad and stopped bleeding pretty quickly.  but i did put him back in the stroller once he calmed down because i didn't want to risk him falling again.  i was glad when lunch was over and we were able to get back on our way.

maddux was telling madelyn about the lion.  i tried to get the lion in the shot too but couldn't get the angle right.

like i said, it was a warm and sunny day...

so mason decided that he should wear his sunglasses.

part of walking for maddux means stopping to try out every bench we passed.

we always have to stop by the train with the bell.  it is stationary but the kids love playing on it and i usually have to persuade them to move on and see the rest of the zoo.

i was hesitant to take and then post this picture of madelyn because i was always the 'flamingo' when i was little.  but we were talking about how her outfit matched the flamingos' colors and then she showed me how she could stand on one leg just like them.

i feel so lucky to have somewhere to take the kids for some outside time and that we had such a beautiful day in january!  it makes me so excited for spring and spending time outside every day.  love.