The growing Roza family: Animal time at the Sacramento Zoo

In mid April I took Lilah to the Sacramento Zoo for the first time. I had actually planned to take her to the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary, but I found out the night before that they are closed on Mondays. Lilah and I were meeting Kyle (Edward's best friend) and his son Jake at the zoo. Thankfully, not only was Kyle okay with the last minute change in plans, but it worked out better for all of us! He and Jake have memberships to the zoo because they go quite often, and he was even able to get me in for free. Score!

Once inside the zoo, we headed to the reptile house first, since that is Jake's favorite spot. It was a little hard for Lilah to figure out what she was supposed to be seeing in all of the small glass enclosures. But I had a great time checking out the snakes, lizards, frogs, etc. After that, we moved on to the birds, kangaroos, and the adorable red pandas. They were so small and cute! Then we headed over to the much-anticipated giraffe exhibit. Lilah was quite excited to see giraffes in person for the first time! It was great to watch her watch the giraffes. She waved to them too, it was so cute! After the giraffes, we checked out the other hoofed animals, the leopards, and then the monkeys! The orangutans were my favorite! There were 2 of them and I could see so much personality in them. Both the orangutans and the chimps surprised me with how human-like some of their actions were. And we had a lot of fun checking out the very sleepy tiger on the other side of the glass wall. Even with the glass plate between us, I was still a little uneasy! Lilah and Jake loved it though!

We stopped for lunch at one point and snacked on a nice patch of grass. Lilah and Jake had fun running around, and it was cute to see her try and keep up with him! The Sacramento Zoo is a nicely sized zoo for a toddler, and I hope to take Lilah back there again later this summer.