Visit with Grandma and Grandpa Second Half

The second half of our visit with Grandma and Grandpa was just as fun as the first half.  On Wednesday we celebrated Kimball's birthday early.  Grandma made spaghetti carbonara for dinner, one of Kimball's favorite meals.  Kimball requested strawberry cake with chocolate frosting for his birthday treat.  

Kimball received some nice gifts for his birthday.  He was very excited about them.

Kimball is rather calm here.  He is hiding all of the excitement that is racing through is body.

Here the excitement has leaped out.

Candy from Kristi.  Yum!

A new lego set.

Connect Four.  I loved this game as a kid and Kimball has played it many times already.

On Thursday, we went to the St. Louis Zoo.  I LOVE the St. Louis zoo.  It is free first off and I think it has a fairly large selection of animals too.  I do wish there were more bears because I never feel like I see enough bears.  It was a PERFECT day for the zoo.  The high temperature for the day was mid 70s so it was very comfortable to walk around and look at the animals.  I don't even think we broke a sweat which is always a plus since I hate sweating.

We planned to get to the zoo early enough so we could pet sting rays without having to pay for the honor.  The free petting session ended at 9:00 and we walked into the petting pool at 8:55 so we made it with just minutes to spare.  Petting the sting rays was probably the highlight of the day for me.  It was just neat to feel them glide under my hand.  They were quite slippery and felt much different from the small sharks that shared the same pool.  We were allowed to touch the sharks, but not feed them.

At the Zoo with Grandma and Kristi.

Lined up petting the rays.  Rebecah's arms weren't long enough to actually reach
any rays, but that didn't keep her from trying.

  Here are some shots of the various animals we saw: 

A large bear chilling in the water.

Penguins

Flamingos, ducks and pelicans.

At the Chimpanzee window.

Prairie dog

Sea lion.

Tortoises

Lions

Camels

Giraffes and Ostriches.  

This is Raja the elephant.  I was 13 years old when he was born.
He is now 21.  It made me feel rather old when I heard he was 21.

Here is the family history on these elephants...I thought it was interesting.  On the far right is the
Grandmother, 43.  On the far left is the daughter who is 17.  Then the 17 year old daughter had two
 babies...the bigger baby is 2 years old and the little elephant was only a few weeks old.  We were lucky to see it.  I just thought it was neat to see 3 generations of elephants.

 

Posing with the park security officer and his horse...outside of the zoo.

On Friday we went to Creve Couer lake and did some kayaking and the kids played in the water.  It was nice weather for this activity too.  It was a little cool in my opinion to swim, but the kids didn't seem to mind. 

A sand dweller.

Water dweller.

We had such a fun time visiting Grandma and Grandpa Coffey.  We are sad that we live so far away that we can't visit them more often. Our next visit won't be the same either, because Kristi has gone off to college and taken Cody--the dog-- with her.