A trip to Bristol Zoo.

And no, I didn't leave Emma in the monkey enclosure.

Here she is admiring the male lion.  He even did a roar for her.  She loved the experience.

We watched the penguins being fed.

And we saw this baby gorilla on its mother's back.

And here's a seal swimming under water.

Here's an okapi - part giraffe, part zebra, all cool!  And one of Aunty Becky's favourite animals.

Emma peeping through the comedy meerkat picture

And Emma next to real meerkat.  They all came to investigate when I opened our sandwiches.  Emma was not at all interested in having anything to eat, but I enjoyed mine.

Here's Emma in the butterfly house where it was really hot and humid.  She was pretending to be a butterfly.

At 1pm there was an animal show in the middle of the zoo.  The first treat was this armadillo who had his lunch.

Then this scarlet macau did a show for us.

This Lemur was called Colin.  He did some great big jumps landing on the Attendant's back.

This is a European Brown Owl (or something) and is the largest species of owl in the world.

Emma was entranced by the animal show.  I think it was her favourite bit of the whole day!

We went to get her face painted soon after.  We saw some other children who had had it done so she was keen.  She sat very still throughout.

As she is only two years old she wasn't allowed a full face painting in case she was sensitive to the make up.  But she got some cool whiskers!

Here she is practising her smile!

This seal jumped out of the water right next to where Emma had run off to.  It gave her a bit of a shock I think as she came running back to me afterwards.

Um, spot the difference? 

Here's Emma and the pelicans close to going home time.

She didn't really like these birds and couldn't wait to get out of the bird house.

She fell asleep in the middle of eating her icecream in the car.  Lucky daddy was on hand to finish it up.  Her face was a mess of makeup and chocolate.  Her painted eyebrows remained after the clean-up much to Mummy's amusement.