Jayden's Birthday Weekend

Jayden opted this year to not have a birthday party with friends, he wanted to go to the Great Wolf Lodge.  However, I missed using a coupon and the GWL is gosh darn expensive if you don't have one.   So, we decided to try out a different place this time and we went to Coco Keys Waterpark.  It is pretty much just as fun as GWL waterpark and about half the price!  :)  We went up to the hotel Friday night and managed to get a sweet deal where they included 4 passes to the KC zoo for $10 more. 
Saturday morning, Jayden and Royal headed right off to the tube slides, while Willow and I went around the lazy river.  I should of counted how many times we went around the river, it was Willow's favorite place be and we spent probably 75% of our time there with her swimming and swimming and swimming for hours.  I went around enough times that I know it is an average of 150 steps around.  :)  I figure it was a good workout since I missed my running club that morning.

Going down the tube slides with Jayden.

Saturday night, we stayed the night in a different hotel and managed to get a sweet hookup.  When we checked in, they had us booked in a room with 1 king sized bed and the only way for us to get a room with 2 beds was to upgrade.  For $25 we upgraded to a secure floor (you feel so fancy when you have to put your keycard into the elevator to punch in your hotel floor), we had access to the club where there was a refrigerator full of bottled water and sodas that we could have as much as we wanted (just the bottled water was worth it since hotel water tastes awful!), there were free appetizers in the evening we could cash in on, and then we also got free breakfast in the morning.  It was awesome!  Royal hung out in the club that evening watching basketball, while the kids watched a movie on our tv.  He brought me a tea they had up there to make up for ditching me for a couple hours.  :)
Sunday morning, after breakfast, we packed up and used our zoo passes to kill a few hours before we had to pick up Royal's parents from the KC airport.
We got to the zoo just in time to watch their live bird show.  I thought Jayden was going to fall out of his chair when they brought out a Peregrine Falcon.  It is Jayden's all time favorite bird because it can fly/dive up to 200 mph.  Going to the zoo with Jayden is a lot of fun.  He can retain facts about animals like it's nobody's business, and he has multiple animal books at home that he has read and reread and not to mention all the Wild Kratts episodes, so there's no need to read the signs, he will tell you all you need to know!  At the end of the bird show you could bring a dollar up to the front and give it to a Blue Hyacinth Macaw and he would put it in a mailbox.

Then we took a ride over the zoo to see the animals from high up!

Jayden took most of the pictures at the zoo, included a whole bunch of Royal's rear-end.  He kept giggling while we were walking and once I downloaded all of his pictures, I had a pretty good idea why.  :)
Royal carried Willow A. Lot.  She was pretty tuckered out from all of our swimming the day before and let's face it, who the heck sleeps good when they are in a hotel???

Jayden asked me to stand in the woods, so he could take my picture.  Guess he wanted me to be in my natural habitat as well.  :)

Here are some of Jayden's favorite animals.