Family Outing!

Yesterday we went to the Nature Center in down town Boise. I will give Tyler 100% credit for thinking up the idea and planning our family outing. He gets good ideas every now and then. :)

We first went into the visitors center which had lots displays and media information about various types of animals. Here Quincy is looking at all the different types of ducks. I think he was mildly confused as to whether they were real of not.

There was lots of information about the animals:

Then we got to the cool part with live stuffed bears, mooses, wolves, etc.

I asked Quincy what he thought this animal was, referring to the bear. He's so funny. He was very thoughtful and then after a great amount of contemplating the question he clearly answered, "Dog" and pointed to the bear. To Quincy everything is dog. He doesn't know how to say other animal names, well sometimes he'll say "tat" for cat, so every kind of animal is a "dog".
Despite not knowing how to say other animal names, he is very smart about telling us when he sees a dog on TV, in a book, from the car, in our neghborhood etc. He even tells us when he can hear a dog! We'll work on the other animals names.

I thought this was mildly creepy and obviously Quincy did too. It had a sign that said: "Crawl into the Bear's den". It was this mock bears den with a stuffed bear carcass laying over the top. I thought it was gross and if I was a kid, I definitely wouldn't be crawling inside to see what other creepy things were in store!

Some more "dogs" -- what some of us like to call wolfs.

A big cat

After our fun learning adventure in the visitor center we went outside for a nature walk. We saw lots of pretty trees and since we forgot our stroller at home, Quincy got to do lots of walking also. It made our family outing a little longer because he wanted to do it himself, without holding our hands, and go at his own pace.... slow.

There were lots of man made streams and ponds with fish in them. They had cut outs in the cement walls that lined the streams so you could see the fish through the glass. I thought that was pretty neat.

Towards the end of our nature walk Quincy found a flower for mom.

We even saw a pretty pond with lily pads in it, not like the gross ones that are all molding together and swampy looking like you find in various lakes in Washington. Though this "pond" was man made.

We had such a fun time exploring and it was fun to watch Quincy fascinated by all the different animals. We are so glad that Tyler took us on a fun family adventure. Besides being together as a family the whole time, the best part was that it was FREE!

I'm sure we'll visit again, especially as Quincy gets older!