Bunch of Monkeys in the Zoo

Last Thursday I went with Eli's class on a field trip to the San Diego Zoo.  We went on the bus tour, saw a lot of monkeys and reptiles and then finished the day with a long (there is always an accident in front of us on the 15) bus ride home.  Luckily most of the kids slept through it.

 Eli is hidden over by Mrs. Hoth at the right.

 The baby hippo was so cute.  It is laying up next to its mother's head.

 This is a crazy monkey called a Gibbon.  It swings around with its long arms and makes a crazy whooping sound.  And it poops and pees in this same position- not attractive.  It got so loud that it started to sound like a car alarm, which all of the second graders felt the need to imitate.  That is when we decided to move on.

 Two little monkeys! :)

All these flamingos were nesting.  They had big eggs and were just waiting for things to hatch.  We got to see the eggs, but no new flamingo babies.

Had a fun day with my monkey, field trips rock!

One Second!

I wish I had a picture of the time clock or something other than just words, but I have to post this regardless.  This past weekend we went to a swim meet in Claremont. They have a pretty huge, sweet gig going on there.  Donald was set to swim in the afternoon based on his age group and warm ups started at 12 for that session.  We got there about 11:45.  He did team warm ups and then we waited for his event.  There were so many people entered in this meet that some events had as many as 11 heats to them. Times that by different age groups, genders and strokes and we ended up waiting for 5 hours for Donald to swim a 30 second race.  But, it was all worth it when he dove off the block and glided into a beautiful dolphin kick followed by intense freestyle.  His coach said it was a thing of beauty.  As I have mentioned, Donald has only been competitively swimming since July, but as of yesterday he is officially only 1.41 seconds away from Junior Olympics!  I can not believe the rate that he is improving.  It is amazing and so fun to watch.  The best part is that he is having a blast!  You would think that waiting that long to race would be boring for a 12 year old, but he was having a great time chilling with his team and soaking up his favorite place to be....in the pool. 

 Just the guys!

 Being silly with the girls

So it's on to blue times and knocking on the door of JO times!  What a ride!

Oh BTW- Eli decided to start swimming again.  I think maybe he figured if he had to be at the pool at least he could be part of the team.  He doesn't want to do swim meets yet though, so maybe that was why he quit the first time, too much pressure.  He can take it as slow as he likes as long as he has fun.  I asked him why he wanted to start again, he said, "I want to feel like I am accomplishing something."  I guess just watching is getting boring for him. :)