The morning of our first full day in Birmingham found us visiting the zoo.

Aunt Brooke, EJ, and KB all stand together to cover the elephant's foot print.

Now, I haven’t been to this zoo in 11+ years (Zoolights, 2000) and they have done some nice work to the place.  Still, we are from a city with an out-of-this-world zoo and so we made the conscious decision to leave comparisons at the door and just enjoy all that we saw.  Then we saw this:

Look at that peacock!!! The cousins were all mesmerized and we stood at this bridge for quite some time.  As the kiddos turned to walk away the bird lowered his feathers because he no longer felt threatened.  I stood there and the feathers stayed down.  Honey walked up and “bam” the feathers went back up.  Honey took a step away and the feathers started back down until Honey leaned back toward the bird and they were up again.  You KNOW Honey just loved that.  His presence made the bird feel threatened.  (insert male voice saying, “That’s right! You know what’s what!” etc.)  So fun.

There were kangaroos close enough to touch, five lion cubs playing roll and tumble, and birds.  Yep, birds.  (It made me think of Australia and this place we took everyone who came to visit.)

A couple of hours was all we needed and it was time to go to lunch (surprise! Chick-fil-a!).

The activities may have been simple but the memories are treasures and the people are 14 of my very favorite.  I am so very thankful.