Brookfield Zoo

Today was Brookfield Zoos 75th anniversary. In honor of this occasion, they made admission for kids free. (Usually $8)

Me thinking that I would be all frugal and everything I thought that this would be a good time to go.

So I piled the boys in the car and we went for the hour long ride down the interstate to get to this zoo.

Apparently the entire area of Chicagoland that had at least 4 or more kids thought the same thing too.

It was so crowded especially for the middle of the week. Seriously what kind of jobs to all these people have that they be at the zoo in the middle of the week?

I think I heard kids being yelled at in no less then 10 different languages.

I was also shocked to see true Amish people.

Isn't that weird to see them in the middle of a big city?

What was also weird was that the adults were in traditional Amish clothing and the men had their traditional beard but the kids (6 years old and younger) were in normal clothes. They looked like any other kid out there. I guess rebellion is starting really young in their little community.

All in all it was crazy and I really do not have a desire to go back.

I like our little bubble that we live in over here in the far west of Chicago.

So we got to the zoo and it cost $8 to park and $12 to get in! Yes that was just the cost of my ticket.

Not one of my more frivolous days.

So I thought for $20 we are going to make the most of this....dadgumit.

We are going to see all the animals we can and we are going to have fun.

Then I ran into the swarm of people in all nationalities and was a bit overwhelmed and then I decided we are just going to do what we can to get out of here and maybe see what animals we can.

There are a lot of animals that have exhibits outside but most of the exhibits are inside.

Swarms of people squeezed into a dark, stinky buildings when I am trying to maneuver a double wide stroller was not my idea of fun.

So we didn't go in any of the inside exhibits.

Luckily, Wild Man and Romeo didn't realize they were missing anything.

I rarely let them out of the stroller. Only to pose for a picture or to get a closer look at an animal.

I am sure this wasn't there most excited trip to the zoo either.

Now the zoo was nice and had a lot of neat things to offer. I will say that there was a lot of construction going on with things that I would be interested to see when it opens. and when the boys know how to defend themselves and now the meaning of "stay beside me or else..."

They had some neat things for the kids to climb on and get pictures with.

Here are the boys in a kangaroo



Romeo doing his best to keep up with big bro.



Notice the boys are wearing jackets... It is July 1st and the high today was 64!!

Crazy weather.




OK this was the more interesting park of the zoo. They have a big dinosaur exhibit (which costs more to get into) To advertise this they put this HUGE dinosaur that moves and groans right in the middle of the zoo. I really think that it was 5 stories high. It was very intimidating.



I tried to get a picture to show how big it is. I couldn't back up far enough to get the whole thing because too many people were behind me and Wild man wouldn't let me walk away from him.



As you can see Romeo really cared less about the big beast. He was actually trying to imitate the sounds and Wild Man was scared. He told me about 5 times that the dinosaur made him scared and he didn't want me to walk by it again. The problem was since it was in the middle of the zoo it was a feat to get around it without seeing it.

I tried to tell Wild man that being far away from it wasn't so scary, and he did fine until it started groaning again and he ran back to the stroller saying "OK mommy, lets go see something else."

In this picture we are about a 100 yards away.



I am trying to get out and try all types of things here and learn from the process of elimination what we will do again.

But now I know, Brookfield zoo is a no go.