On Vacation!!!

Today, we drove from South Bend to Schaumburg. It has been a very relaxing 4th! We did a little bit of shopping at the Brookfield Mall and then visited the Medieval Times Castle!  We had fantastic seats, table 4 in the green section.  We had the privilege of cheering on the evil green knight. Dane liked the garlic bread, and all of the yelling and cheering! (Although it did get pretty loud at times!)   We had a lot of fun, it was interesting to see all of the groups yelling and cheering on their knights. The show lasted about two hours, but it didn't seem to last that long. Our evil knight did not win, the black and white knight was declared the winner in the end.  We spent the evening playing in the pool. We will be staying here again tomorrow night, another zoo adventure tomorrow!

Another great day at another great zoo, we were at the Toledo Zoo today! We were a little disappointed because the hippoaquarium was under construction, so we had to see the hippos in their winter habitats. However, there were a lot of other great animals to see in wonderful habititats: Dane's favorite animal was a sloth bear, aka SLOTHY! He was so excited to finally see a sloth bear. (He had been talking about meeting this bear for weeks!) Of course, our trip to the gift shop included a stuffed sloth bear toy purchase!   Allan's favorite animal today was "Lucas" the new baby elephant at the zoo: I had a hard time choosing a favorite. I was pretty impressed with the rhinos though: After the zoo, we drove out of Ohio and into Indiana for the night. We will drive to Chicago tomorrow!

Today we went to the Columbus Zoo. We were a little afraid that we weren't going to be able to spend much time there this morning because of the rain! Well, we managed the sprinkles in the morning and the heat in the afternoon.  The Columbus Zoo was fantastic.... The habitats for the animals were large and very naturalistic. There were a lot of educational and play areas throughout the zoo... and a wide array of fun statues to climb on and pose with:  Dane's favorite animal from today was a Komodo Dragon: Allan's favorite animal was the red panda. My favorite animal was the manatee: We had a great time at the zoo, even with the heat and humidity! After the zoo, we drove north to Toledo for the night. Here is where we drove today: (map from Google maps) If you want to see more of our photos from today, visit Facebook.

Today, we rode an open air safari bus through THE WILDS. I asked Dane if we could possibly get one nice family picture on this trip without a crazy face.....he said maybe on the last day. (I'm not holding my breath!)  The tour was almost 3 hours long. We saw giraffes. They looked like they were trying to escape from their enclosures when we drove through the gates. Dane's favorite animal from today was: the ostrich!  Allan's favorite animal from today was: Fringe-eared oryx I liked the: Sichuan Takin We had a great time riding on the safari buses, but it sure was hot! I think that this tour would be better in spring or fall or on a cooler day when more of the animals are moving around! After our safari, we drove to Columbus for the night. It was so hot, we opted to just relax at the hotel. Here is the map of where we drove today from google maps: More of our photos from today can be found on Facebook , you can also find more information about visiting The WILDs here.

Blogger is back! YEAH! (Instead of starting from a couple of days ago, I am going to do today's post and then work backwards to update you all. I will schedule the older posts for the days that they were supposed to be. So, if you want to read the past couple of days, you will have to click on "older post." ) We woke up this morning in Richfield, Ohio and headed north to Cleveland to visit the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The Museum of Natural History is right next door to the Art Museum and there was a "globe" exhibition throughout the area where various artists created worlds to bring awareness for various issues. This one features "unplugged" play. I forget exactly how much power Americans use for "play"in a year, but the number was unreal! Dane was super excited to get to the dinosaur exhibit!  He really enjoyed all of the animal exhibits and small dioramas. They also had a great discovery zone play area where Dane and I had