Real Life Rio

I dearly wish I had a four hour chunk of uninterrupted personal time to go through all of our trip photos and compose a delightfully entertaining and witty blogpost.

Alas, I don't.  So instead, I'll toss out a few pictures from the quick zoo trip that we took right before leaving.  I absolutely love living close enough to the zoo to visit frequently.  Not only do we get mega-mileage out of our annual pass, but it's delightful to drop by for an hour or two, catching just a few animals of interest at a time.

This time, our trip through the "Garden of the Senses" prepped us to watch Rio 2, which happened to be our in-flight entertainment.

Lest ye mistake this fella for Blu, he's actually an indigo macaw.  His trainer told me how blue macaws are indeed far scarcer.  According to the bird man, the movie Rio has an element of truth to it.  They did try to mate a blue macaw raised in captivity with a wild partner.  Alas, in the real story the match-making was unsuccessful.

Here are Brooklyn and Talia pictured with "Goobers." Love the name!

This bird's far too pretty to be Nigel, the evil cockatoo.

Of course, it only seemed appropriate to prep the kids for some of the actual wildlife they would encounter on their trip.  This California sea lion may be big, but he's nowhere near as large as Woody, the 2200 pound Steller sea lion we would later meet.

Hey look, Brooklyn's riding a giraffe!

Talia naturally wanted a turn as well...

...as did Eli.  Here's our handsome fella the day before his hair got chopped.  I kind of miss those long beachboy locks!

The giraffe reminds me of a funny story.  A while back (long before Annie Mae was even a dream), Callie and Adam gave us three whimsical pieces of art from their local Art Fest.  They now hang on our kitchen wall where they lovingly represent our three oldest children.

This probably explains Eli's remark: "When Brooklyn grows up, she's going to be a giraffe.  I'm going to be a turtle.  But Talia's going to be a MONSTER!"