Hello again

So, I recognize that it's been AGES since my last post.   Sorry.  It's either feast or famine with my blogging.  I either have a hundred things in one day I want to blog about or nothing for weeks. 

But we have had a nice time lately.  We took a weekend trip to St Louis where we went to the zoo and the Magic House.  The zoo was, as expected, full of animals.  Some interesting, like the tigers, some boring, like frankly most of the bird exhibits.  There were a couple weird birds, but mostly they were, well birds. 

Yup, see the fake smile? Here's D with some sort of Hornbill (well camouflaged off to his right.)  There were lots of different kinds of Hornbills.  Probably because most of them had such an odd beak that they couldn't survive in the wild. 
 

There was also the occasional exhibit of animals that you had never heard of.  Like this one of a yamahoo or an zandagur or something like that.

How do you think that poor fellow got up there?  And isn't it amazing how even with very few facial muscles he can still look puzzled about how he is supposed to get down?  My theory?  The zoo keeper knew that this animal wasn't interesting, and seeing how he was set between the giraffes and the camels (two zoo celebrities) he knew they needed some pizazz in the exhibit.  So before the zoo opened, he used a crane to lift that unfortunate creature up there.  It's really quite easy to see why people are against zoos.  That is some serious cruelty.

We also went to the Magic House, which is a Children's Museum and  super cool one.  D had quite a good time there.  There are swirly pipes on a wall filled with air that let you put fuzzy balls into and the air zooms them through the pipes and shoots them out at some unsuspecting sap's head. There are water tables and sand tables and detective rooms and long swirly slides and train rooms and fishing holes.  Fun, fun.

D got to sit in the Oval Office and use the big red phone.  He said he was calling his mom and dad. I can already see a congressional inquiry into the use of government property for personal use. 

Even Belle got to play in the baby section. Yes, she still has the mohawk.  I'm wondering if it's ever going to collapse.  D's did at around 6 months, but since most of her little head is just covered in fuzz, I guess the long stuff feels the need to express itself.