Exploring St Louis

Since Donovan is getting old enough to enjoy walking around and exploring things we have tried to make it a point to take him to see new things. A couple weekends ago we started with Powder Valley Nature Center. It is a local park that has a great indoor area as well as paved paths you can hike in the woods. Donovan liked the inside area but his absolute favorite part of PVNC was the stick he found outside that we let him hold while we hiked (an man did we hike, at one point I swear the path was 45% angle). Here are some pics from the inside of the nature center.

Donovan crawling out of the hole in the puppet show wall.

Watching the big kids. Taking it all in.

Checking out the birds with Daddy.

Opening and closing Daddy in the "bird house".


A rare glimpse of the reclusive Daddy and Donovan birds in a man made bird house.


Then this past Sunday when there was a break in all the rain I rounded the boys up and we made a quick trip to the zoo. Donovan was a little nervous when we started out at the Penguin house. I thought he would really like it because you get to be so close to them but they were so loud and so different than anything he had ever seen he got scared. He did really like the monkey house. I couldn't tell what he liked more though, the monkeys or the fact that we let him get out of the stroller to walk around. He also seemed to enjoy the elephants, but once again he was also enjoying riding on my shoulders and using my hair as reigns so who knows what really was making him the happiest. Overall though we had a great day at the zoo and we look forward to doing it many more times this summer!

Checking out some monkeys.

Even cooler than the monkeys was the bench!

Hanging with Mommy. Donovan wore his zoo animal onsie so we would have good luck with the animals being out. It worked about 50% of the time.

Hanging with Daddy. We promise he does like us, it is just not reflected in these pictures.