Being 2

It's Meg's 2nd birthday today.  We went to the zoo for a birthday treat (it was a good excuse to renew our lapsed membership!).
We started at the hippopotamus enclosure.  It's the first time we've seen them all outside, rather than in the hippo house.  We saw one of the big ones in the pond, partly submerged.  

Meg looked so delighted when she spotted it!

Next were the cheetahs.  The kids scooted there, Meg with her brand new bright orange one. She's very pleased to have her own scooter.

The cheetahs are beautiful, and we were lucky enough to see them up close today.

Betsy and Meg jumped along the rocks outside the cheetah enclosure.  I love this leap Betsy is doing here:

As usual the lions were all sleeping.  I'm always surprised by their size, they are so big and magnificent.

Nearby, we looked at the meercats and the zebras.  One of the meercats was enjoying the very fleeting sunshine, laying on its back.  A man next to us had a very pretty insect land on his hand (a shield bug maybe..?), and once we'd all had a look he shook it off and it landed next to another meercat.  It was eaten in a flash!

The kids were getting hungry by this point, so we jumped in the car and drove round to the elephants.  We had that very British summer lunch - a picnic in the car!  Quite honestly the weather has been awful.  There's been flooding in Kent, Wales, Yorkshire.  It was torrential on the way to the zoo, and windy and cold and, well, not very summery at all.  I have the  right hump about it, as we'd planned to go camping for the week in the Peak District.  There's a home ed camp near Buxton called Peak Camp and I really wanted to go.  I'll plan it for next year instead.

By this point, Freddie had jumped into so many puddles he was soaked through.  I got very grumpy and insisted we went home.  Not my finest hour.