A visit to the zoo

The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is free to residents of Cuyahoga County on Mondays, year-round. You just show up, flash your drivers' license, and they let you in! Cleveland gets a bad rap, but it's a great city for families.

Last week, Julie's little preschool class went to the zoo on Monday. We packed the babies into strollers, lunches into coolers, and put on our walking shoes. I'd taken Julie to the zoo once before, but she was only a year and a half old, I think. I'm probably a bad mom.

Well, Julie loved the zoo. She was so excited. I got some pictures, but my camera battery died partway through our day. We had beautiful weather -- high 60s, I think. Then it snowed the next day.

Julie was super excited about the elephants.

She also liked the giraffes.

I love tigers, and she allowed me to take a picture of her there as well.

Julie's class with "the monkey." (Side note: we were a crazy little group. Preschool this year has been Julie and four other kids from church, and us moms all rotate teaching. So it was five parents, five students, five younger siblings, and one older sibling. Four moms and one dad -- that mom had had a baby four days earlier -- eleven kids, four double strollers, and one regular stroller. We were a zoo within a zoo.)

A video of the tiger. And the Julie. Password is stripes.