zoo views.

I love that at this age, my boys can enjoy and see with wonder the world around them, even, and sometimes especially, the things they interact with over and over again.
The same racetrack brings delight day after day, a favorite book, or game, a certain slide at a park, or a special shirt from Grandma.

"If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older." 

-Abraham Sutzkever

One of my boys' "love it always, every time, whenever" things is the zoo.  (We have a pass through Kevin's work that pays for itself if you get there only twice.) We take the family out to visit the animals quite a lot. They love it every time.  I for one personally love it most in the dead of winter here because the temps are so much more bearable.  But even dripping in sweat on our most recent visit, the boys were in toddler heaven.
These are some pictures from the last two times we went...you can tell which trip was in the middle of July by the wet hair and red faces. :)

lions and tigers and bears...

We finally made it to the Houston zoo a few weeks ago. We got to go on a Friday off for Kevin so we lucked out with no traffic in or out of the city, wahoo! And there weren't bad crowds at the zoo either, for the same reason.
Lee and Drew had never been to a zoo before and we were pretty sure that they (Lee especially, let's be real) would love it.  We got to go with our cousins that live near us, and cousins make everything better.  We LOVE having them live near for a little bit, we love that Lee and Drew have cousins they can play with and get to know.

It was really hot so I was glad they allow you to bring whatever food/drink you want, we brought some snacks in a cooler we could stick under the stroller and some water bottles filled mostly with ice.  Only down side, once our water/ice ran out we had to use zoo drinking fountains to refill, and the water tastes like dirt.

The snakes and lizards in the reptile house, elephants, lions and monkeys were some of our favorite animals.

And we LOVED that they had a splash pad in the zoo, it was perfect for the kids to be able to cool down, course next time, I think we'll just dress them in swimsuits. :)