A Santa and an Animal Encounter

Where else could these two things happen at the same visit? Only at the zoo of course. Yesterday was breakfast with Santa at the zoo, which Katie enjoyed. She got to have muffins, see Santa and hang out with her cousin. Good times. My sister has a friend who works at the Zoo and was able to get us an animal encounter. Thanks again to Megan for taking the time to hang out with us and show us the animals and teach us a little about them. We saw lots of animals, scary ones, cute ones, icky ones, happy ones, and shy ones. Katie is an avid Wonder Pets watcher. Has been for a couple of years now. There is one particular episode that seems to stick with her though, "The Wonder Pets Save the Hedgehog". So Megan was kind enough to bring out the hedgehog and if you ask Kate what the highlight of the trip was yesterday, the hedgehog trumps Santa. Funny girl. So I'll just list the photos of the animals Katie got to touch and see below my ramblings. In the last pic, the carapace on the tortoise is all messed up because he was kept as a pet and fed dog food. So just an FYI, if you want a tortoise as a pet, you are so not supposed to feed them dog food. Just thought that might be a useful piece of information to someone.
Oh and if you are wondering where Sam is in all these pics, he's being an arm monkey because yesterday morning he burnt his finger. Because AS USUAL he insisted on being held while I cooked breakfast and curiosity got the best of him, I suppose. 19 months old are ridiculously like kittens, I swear. There's a really funny story about a gingerbread house, gum, and how we ended up in the ER, but I'll save that embarrassment for later. Right now, I gotta go cook me some meatballs. Paleo ones. With Almond Meal. Mmmmmm.....my tummy says, "yummy".