day at the zoo

We took little un to the zoo today...
We've wanted to take her for ages and it was a really nice day out...   

The zoo always gives me mixed feelings... On the one hand I love seeing the animals and so did little un,  and as I'm unlikely to afford to travel and see them in the wild, this is the closest I'll ever get...  but there's always the worry that the animals can seem a bit sad...either that, or they're asleep in some un-viewable corner and you're left scouring some shrubbery looking for signs of life... 

Plus the whole thing costs and arm and a leg... it's really not a cheap day out... 

However I still get really excited, just like a small child myself, when I see the Tigers and  the monkeys and  as we haven't had many family days out yet,  this was well worth it... 

We saw the chimps, the lions,  sun bears, monkeys, lemurs, penguins, a tigers bum and Tiddlypom really liked the pygmy hippos...

She also played on the various climbing frames, and came away with a plastic hippo from the shop... 

I managed to get a few shots with my proper camera and my long lens... I'm a bit out of practice, as it's tricky to carry my kit and little un, and also to focus on my subject, when I need eyes in the back of my head to keep track of tiddlypom...  But once I dusted off the cobwebs it all started to come back to me...  

So it's been a nice round up to a busy week... which involved delivering my costumes to the museum,  a playdate with a local friend, a catch up  and farewell meeting with a pal before she jets of to the other side of the world, and also some full on toddler wrangling,  as me and tiddlypom have been having some falling outs this week... 

But we still have the weekend stretching out ahead of us,  so I'm hoping for a more relaxed couple of days...