National Aviary!

See the rest of the pictures here!

We went to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh today. It's the kind of place where you walk around, and the birds walk/fly around you, and occasionally zoom right past your head, and occasionally walk straight at you and make you nervous that they'll attack, but they're so pretty that you can totally forgive them.

We arrived at the Aviary, got out of the car, and started walking toward the building, and Katrina's shoe broke. Juanito tied it up with string, and it worked temporarily, and Karen (who was coming a bit later) was nice enough to bring her other shoes for Katrina to change into. Shoes are not our friend this trip!

There were larakeets that we were allowed to go in and let them land on us. The kids (and Juanito) all totally seized that opportunity and tried to convince all of the larakeets to land on them. Zane was all eager until one of the birds pooped right near him, and then he was out of there (at least for quite a while!). I am actually completely shocked that none of us got pooped on all day!

There was a giant bird (a Great Argus Pheasant) who enjoys walking around right on the sidewalk, and he's awesome to take pictures of, but he's a little bit nerve-wracking, because he looks like he could do serious damage if he decided to attack. I was crouched down in front of him, taking a picture, and he suddenly and completely without warning let out a giant, incredibly loud honky-squawk. It startled me enough that i screamed a bit and nearly fell over, but still somehow took a picture, and resulting picture is mostly blurry, but kind of awesome.

There was a guy who worked there who was absolutely in the right job. He stood and talked to us about penguins for about half an hour, and then talked to us for a long time in the Rainforest room too. And he was actually really interesting. When i suggested we leave the penguin area to go see the sloth being fed, Houston was all, "But i want to keep learning about penguins!"

One thing that i've learned about us is that we just spend longer looking at stuff than most people do. According to Google, most people spend about 2 hours at the aviary. We were there for over 4 hours, and we could have stayed longer, except it was closing and we were all starving. And you'd THINK it was because i'm holding everyone up, taking pictures, but you'd be wrong. I usually just keep taking pictures because the kids are still exploring/looking/learning. And Juanito is nearly always trailing behind us all. The world is just such an interesting place!