To China for Magnolia: the Zoo

Y’all. It is so good to be home.

And one reason (albeit a teeny tiny one compared to being able to squeeze my babies at any given moment and sleep in my own admittedly crowded bed) is this:

The interwebs. There is no VPN required, no wireless kicking on and off, no overloaded data plan, no upload errors, no timing out. Just me, taking a plethora of pictures of my kidlets, and being able to post them freely and painlessly.

And today, in honor of all that is free and fast here in our great nation, I choose to post a lot.

So, you might have already guessed, this post is about our trip to the Guangzhou Zoo. I’ve been to this zoo more than a time or two but on this trip, it was an especially nice outing.

The weather had been unseasonably hot and humid when we landed in Guangzhou but eased up significantly by the time of our zoo trip.

We also had a wonderfully wise guide who scheduled our trip early in the day. So we avoided the hot sun as well as bigger crowds – for the first hour or so, it kinda felt like we had the zoo to ourselves.

Which was really nice since some of “us” are still acclimating to others of “us”. (Girl did not want to share her tiger. Thankfully Magnolia was either oblivious or simply couldn’t have cared less.)

The zoo has a small section with carnival-type rides which I’ve always sort of avoided in the past, either due to the age of our littlest, or lack of adult-sized help to navigate it.

But not this trip. With two big brothers to help, who both perked up at the sight of some non-animal-related exhibits, we were all over it. It was just a matter of choosing which rides to ride.

The carousel was our first choice, of course.

It was Clementine’s first ride on a carousel. I’m not quite sure how she felt about it, but I’m fairly confident I enjoyed watching her more than she enjoyed riding because I pretty much loved every single second of it.

So cute.

And I’m betting it was Miss Magnolia’s first time on a carousel as well. She was even less sure than her big sister about these moving animals and blaring music.

But by the end of the ride, she was kinda digging it.

That dimple tells me everything I need to know.

Right next to the carousel were the bumper cars. We initially walked right past them, but when Dalton mentioned that he’d never been on the bumper cars before, ever, we made a u-turn.

That needed to be remedied.