Houston-there was no problem

Ella had her first ever Spring Break last week. We live in the Spring Break destination of South Texas so I decided to avoid the beaches and head to Houston. Chris had to work so it was just the kids and me. Here is what we did:

We drove up to Houston on Wednesday. Amazingly we had to make zero stops on the three hour drive but did have to rush to a restroom as soon as we arrived. We then went to the Houston Zoo.

While at the zoo I reminisced on the past zoos of my life. The Utah Hogle zoo was remembered when we found this:

I have many memories of my mother taking me to that zoo. These memories involve this type of lion drinking fountain and the homemade popcorn my mom brought for us to snack on. I also remember pretending to be a Prairie Dog. Like this:



Next I thought of the St. Louis zoo. I loved that zoo. It was free. Also, it introduced me to my favorite animal:

The Okapi

I was happy to discover that the Houston zoo has Okapis. I was excited to show them to my children.


Finally, I remembered the Tucson zoo. Ah, the Tucson zoo. It is so simple and perfect. No excessive walking between the animals; they are all perfectly spaced so my kids don't get too bored or tired. In fact, you can spend an hour there and see everything. Perfect for a family of young children. This picture reminded me of the Tucson zoo because we loved to pose like the flamingos there:

I know Rhys isn't posing like a flamingo, but he did look at them so that counts.

Here is another picture of the Houston zoo:

Don't get scared, it's Ella and Eli.

After the zoo we played at the park, which I found out was funner than the zoo. Hmmmm.

Okay. On to the next adventure.

We spent the night at Days Inn and woke up ready to go to....

Space Center Houston!

Eli was super excited to go see a REAL Rocket Ship. And the wasn't disappointed. The first think we did (after loosing and finding Eli) was to take a tour of the actual NASA astronaut training facilities.

Here we are looking in at the simulation room. Everything in it is fake, but made to help train astronauts.

After the training facilities we were taken to Rocket Park were we saw the actual Mercury 4 rocket ship.

Back in the Space center we went to the Starship Gallery. Here we saw moon rocks and...

the Apollo 17 Command Module

And Astronauts! Well, statues of them anyway.

Next we decided to go to the children's play area. We promptly lost Eli (yes, again) and found him. After playing for a while it was time to drive home.

Spring Break sure was fun!