Columbus Zoo and Aquarium

I need to start off by saying that this is, hands down, my favorite post ever (mostly because of the slide show)!  We had the most amazing weekend in Columbus with my family.  The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Todd could have been there with us (he had to work Friday night so he stayed home).

The zoo was incredible!  I had heard that it was one of the best in the country, and I'll have to agree with my sister when she said it is THE best.  There were so many different kinds of animals, and a lot that we don't have at the Toledo Zoo.  Most of them were very active - the only animal we weren't really able to see because it was sleeping was the red panda.  There was a boat ride, a train ride, and a petting zoo.  The aquarium had a touch tank, and the boys even got to touch a snake in the reptile house!  They have everything divided up by continent, which gives the park more of a "theme park" feeling than our zoo, but I liked being able to orient myself with where everything was and what I was seeing.  We skipped out on the African Congo for time's sake, but also because we do have a pretty big African section at our zoo.  We also skipped Zoombezi Bay (the waterpark attached to the zoo) and Jungle Jack's Landing (which is mostly just rides), but we saw pretty much everything else.  We had to take a little break in the middle of the day to head back to my parents' for lunch and the boys' naps, and even the adults needed a rest!  My sister and her husband joined us for the afternoon, and then we finished up with dinner at my parents' that night.

I took a LOT of pictures, and I knew that it would be a chore to load them all in to this post.  I have stopped using my actual camera completely, and I rely now only on my iPhone.  I like to click, click, click away when I'm taking pictures of the boys.  They are so active that it usually takes me a couple (or more) tries to get a decent picture from them, and I like seeing the variety and different facial expressions that I get when I look at all of them later.  I love the goofy ones that don't turn out well, and I can't wait to show them to the boys when they are older.  Lots of photos equals lots of memories, right?  Anyway, I came up with the idea of a slideshow, googled it, and realized that I could put one together using iPhoto.  Since I use this to upload photos to my computer anyway, I figured it would be really easy.  It was, and I am SO pleased with the result.  It takes a little while to watch the whole thing, but it is totally worth it.  I will definitely be making more of these!

Enjoy!