Wednesday July 16th. Niabi Zoo, Moline, IL

We had a great opportunity to get together with Jen and Evan while they were up in Illinios, so we took them up on it. Jen and I planned out where to meet and our first place didn't seem like it was going to work. Then we happened upon the Niabi Zoo. With admission of just $5 per adult, we both decided that it was affordable and we would meet there. Little did we know it would be the hottest day of the year so far, but that did not stop us! Our boys were such troopers, too.

Noah stops for a cool drink.

We are all so glad that we went to that zoo! They had beautiful facilities for all of the animals. Some of our favorites were...

First, the baby elephant (well obviously not a live one, but a statue). Our boys posed for a picture for us. Notice matching shoes on our boys! There were two live, older, female elephants at the zoo that were donated by Ringling Bros.

Then we saw some really strange looking monkeys! One of the real White-Handed Gibbons came and sat right next to the glass while the boys were watching them.


We then looked at the fish, turtles, ducks, geese and swans. The gold fish were huge! Deana, Jen's mom said they looked like carp. When we came back later, one of the swans decided to "kiss" Noah's foot. He was not too excited about the idea. I think he finally decided it was ok though when I told him it was a kiss.

The Black Leopard. It (because I do not know the sex of the leopard) was very intrigued by Evan and Noah. They were playing by the fence, more interested in leaves and grass than the large cat and it came right over to the fence to greet our boys. Then we decided to walk around to the other side of the fence and it followed us over there too. We went over to the Reptiles building and when we came out, the Leopard still followed our kids every step. We were just glad that there were two fences and a fence over top between our beautiful boys and this curious cat!

With our boys both being born in Gainsville, I thought it was only natural that they both loved the gators.

The Giraffes. They were definately the favorite of the day! We happened upon one of the employees who was giving his family a tour and got to feed the giraffes with his family! It is a program that they are trying to start at the zoo. We were all so enthused! Did you know that giraffes have a black tongue so that it does not get sunburned? A little piece of trivia I learned being at the Niabi Zoo.

We stopped for one more photo op with the boys. They both did a good job of posing for us. Noah is sporting his new giraffe glasses. His other sunglasses are MIA and were getting too small. I thought it was funny that he posed almost exactly like his last sunglasses photos. Check out the previous post to compare. You have to scroll to the bottom of the post.

The last event of the day was a hippo ride that Jen I decided to take, but the hippo charged our photographer, so the hippo got cut off in the pictures!

Hope you enjoyed our day at the zoo as much as we did! Anybody up for a trip to the zoo?