Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo

The Lincoln Park Zoo is a beautiful zoo in a park setting just north of downtown Chicago.

Our favorite part of the day was getting up close with the hippo!

The gorillas have a beautiful enclosure and we were able to get close

 to them and watch the two 2yr old babies play, which was adorable!

African Wild Dogs, I just love their unique markings.

Meerkats!

Hugging the croc!

Cutting thru the park on our way to the Barn Yard.

 The petting zoo animals were all put away but we still had fun in the Barn Yard.

Milwaukee's County Zoo with friends

For years my friend Dawn and I commiserated about the pain of infertility, longing for children that seemed would never come. Fortunately we were both blessed with 2 children since then, and today our children would meet for the first time! We chose to meet at the zoo, a place that all of us would enjoy.

 The zoo sits on a very large property with the exhibits spaced pretty far from each other with lots of green space between. My favorite was the small mammals building where 3 different types of bats and a number of different tiny monkeys (tamarinds, bush babies, etc) are housed.

The four grizzly bears were very active and vocal, taking turns swimming and lounging in a hammock while we were watching.

Train! If there is a train, we are sure to ride it.

Before saying our goodbyes, the kids had fun playing hide and seek and 

just running around together. It was so amazing to see them enjoying their time together. 

Milwaukee's Public Museum

We spent two days at this museum where a giant whale skeleton overhead welcomes you to the exhibits.

Insects are a focus at this museum, which was good news for my bug-loving kiddos. 

Bugs of all shapes and colors were on display. Dead and alive.

The butterfly room was a blast and the kids were excited that butterflies actually 

landed on them this time! We even saw a fresh butterfly emerging its chrysalis.

Asher made himself at home to watch this video on dinosaur bone discovery.

One of their favorite movies right now is "Night at the Museum" where the displays come to life at night. This was the first time Asher has seen animatronic dinos since watching the movie. He was a bit cautious this time (using the wall for cover).

For some reason they REALLY liked this statue....

....like, really liked him!

We watched two movies on the DOME! It was the first time we've ever seen a Dome movie and it was pretty incredible. The screen wraps completely around so you have to move your head around to watch the action and it appears 3D.  The first day we watched Dinosaurs Alive, a movie about recovering dinosaur bones in the Gobi desert and how those discoveries changed what we know about them. A few minutes into the movie Asher kept saying. "I don't like this movie" in a worried voice. Shortly after that, he kept saying, "Wow", "Wow"! Yes, turns out he enjoyed it after all and asked to watch it again. 

On our next visit we watched the Pandas movie in 3D on the dome, a documentary about breeding, raising and releasing pandas back into the wild. It was the kids' first 3D movie and it was pretty funny to see their reaction to the objects seeming to come right out at them.

Here you can see how the screen (the green part) really wraps around. 

They love putting coins in these round donation things.