a trip to the Pocatello zoo

As my father-in-law not so subtly pointed out at dinner the other night (haha), I've been "stingy" with posts so far this summer and he's right. I got wrapped up in the book series, I am Number Four, and haven't put it down to catch up on our life lately so we'll start with two Saturdays ago when we found ourselves  at a free family day at the zoo! 

Liam's first and only zoo experience was last summer. He was about 10 months old at the time and just learning how to walk so as you can imagine he was much more interested in looking at down at those two little feet of his trucking right along than looking up at any animals. Here we are almost an entire year later and our zoo experience was much the same as last time! Haha He was still very much interested in the ground. The only difference was that this time it wasn't to look at his feet but instead on the hunt for sticks, rocks, sand, bark, anything he could get his hands on. haha We were kind of glad it was a free family day considering we basically took a nature walk at the zoo that we could have done near our own neighborhood. But look at this cute boy with his handful of sticks! He was in heaven! 

Off roading from the path. ;)

Annnnnddd picking up bark!

There is a path that you have to hike to to see the grizzly bears and along the way we came across a sandbox that was set up for little archeologists. Liam was loving playing with the fossil excavator brush and when he got sick of that, just tossing it aside to scoop up a few big handfuls. haha

It was fun to see cactus growing in random spots. 

It was a good thing someone (Nic) was paying attention to the road because as we are walking along a snake slithers across the road! No more off roading for you Liam!

If there was any animal that Liam definitely loved it was the grizzly bears. One was sitting in the distance and the second Liam ran and put his face up against the glass, the bear crossed the entire enclosure and came right up to the window to say hello! Liam LOVED it and was smiling and giggling! 

Another favorite part that brought about a fit of giggles, him and daddy shuffling their feet together and kicking up dust and rocks. haha True boy stuff!

The swans were my favorite. ;)

Right before we left, we took Liam down the slide. He is getting so good at going down all by himself!