Art Museum
We finally made it to the local art museum, and it's definitely going in our regular rotation of outings! It was a much larger and higher quality collection than we were expecting with great works from every era and from all over the world. For our first visit, we just did an exploratory tour and breezed through the museum just to get a feel for what's there. Granted, we got pulled in by a few things and just had to stop and read signs, but we spent almost two hours poking around the galleries and courtyards. We intend to revisit the museum to focus on just one or two exhibits per trip.

Classic pose with the zoo statuary!

Zoo
Everybody loves the zoo! A couple of the highlights included the hippo being back on exhibit (his space was being renovated the last few visits), and actual sightings of the elephants and the tiger (they're usually hiding).

We had to get a photo with the elephant,
my personal favorite.

 However, this time we spent most of our time and were totally fascinated by the birds in residence. Especially when we discovered a walk-through aviary down a path we hadn't noticed before! Bug also decided to work on her photography skills during this trip and caught a few great pics:

Spoonbills are such funky looking birds.

  

This gorgeous red-crested turaco was one of our favorites in the aviary.

Bug even managed to capture him spreading his wings!

Wednesday Church Night
We've recently decided to transition to a different church. We've got a variety of reasons, but the real driving force for making the move was Monkey and Bug's (completely valid) dissatisfaction with the youth group and the new youth pastor (nothing immoral or inappropriate, but they didn't feel like they fit in with the group, and this youth pastor didn't seem like he was going to create an atmosphere conducive to healthy spiritual growth).

We've attended the new church's traditional service a few times (and loved it and the pastor), and this past week we decided to try out the Wednesday night offerings. Everybody loves it! Monkey and Bug had a blast at youth group. I knew it was going to be good when, within moments of arriving, another 6th grade girl spotted them ("More 6th grade girls! Whoohoo!"), introduced herself, and insisted "Come meet my friends!" They were instantly plugged into a gaggle of middle school girls who they stuck with for games, dinner, and a special speaker who happened to be their martial arts instructor! They also knew a handful of other kids from various sports teams they've been on, and found out about a middle school girls small group Bible study that they want to get involved in. (I just need to find out the details.) Meanwhile, Lion and I had a lovely time making new friends (this church has homeschoolers!), and getting involved in the children's and adult ministries (Bible video, discussion, and crafts for Lion; Mere Christianity book discussion for me).