Texas: Dallas Zoo

We spent a couple of days in the Dallas area, to celebrate Ian's birthday, and to have one last little get-away before school started.

It is actually quiet the distance from our house - five and a half hours doesn't sound that long - but in reality is - ha!

Since it was just for a few days, it didn't require quiet as much planning, and minimum packing is always a win.

We left earlish in the morning, and made our way there, stopping along the way from so food.

One of the best burgers ever...

and family lunches are one of my favorite things.

once we finally made it to Dallas, we only had a couple of hours at the zoo. We greatly under estimated the amount of time we needed.

The Dallas Zoo is one of the better zoos that we have been to (and we have been to a lot of them) - there is so much to do, and so many hands on activities for the kids.

It is always a treat for us to be able to do these kinds of activities with the kids, since we literally have nothing where we live, so we always make a point to make time for this if we are in certain areas.

My kids do love any zoo, wild park, animal park, aquarium or safari. We live for these kinds of experiences, and I love the knowledge the kids obtain through these activities.

I love waiting for the end of summer to travel, it is less busy and crowded. We pretty much had the entire zoo to ourselves - it was fabulous. One of my favorite perks about homeschooling.

The kids are obsessed with statues of any assortment, so we literally had to take a picture with every single one we passed. It got old for me, but the loved it so much, so of course I had to oblige.

Hence the one thousand pictures with some sort of statue that will follow below, in no particular order.

The children's zoo is a fun little area, that is specifically set up for kids with play grounds, and a ton of hands on activities. We were there late in the afternoons so we missed most of the morning activities. I just love the whole set up, the way it is laid out, and all the learning that can happen here.

Their favorite part was brushing the goats - it was kind of hard to tell who enjoyed it more, the kids or the goats. I loved this part as well, it was super cute.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, hanging out, laughing a ton, taking train rides, and observing the funnest animals and reptiles. It really was one of our better zoo experiences.

I love little get-a-ways with the family, it is the most special times.

Ian picked burgers for dinner as well, because well we are a burger loving family (minus Hayleigh, but o well.)

It was so delicious.... and the nutella shake, don't even get me started on that.