My Day With Baleigh
On Thursday, I spent the day with Baleigh, my cousin on my husbands side of the family. She is 12 years old and she is quite the young lady. I drove to her house and picked her up, and that is a 75 minute drive, and I am not a fan of driving. I did make a wrong turn and went into the next town over, but I easily rectified the situation. Driving back towards this end of town however, I did miss my exit and had to go another way. The problem with that was that I didn’t know how to get to the zoo from there. So I grab the GPS and make her look it up. She read me the directions and I said “Is there any mention of Route 28?” she said “No” and I said that the directions were good enough for me.
I knew the first part of the directions and I had a different way of getting there than the GPS and so we laughed at the GPS saying “Recalculating”. Its really funny how I swear that voice is showing beligerence when it has to “recalculate”. We eventually make it to the zoo.
It was a perfect day for the zoo. Cloudy and not too hot, so the animals were active. And boy did we hit a jackpot year with all the baby animals. We didn’t see the young tigers, or if we did, we couldn’t tell. They were born last year. We did see the two baby elephants, both girls, who were born last year. I was surprised at how small they still were, but considering how big they have to get, I guess its not surprising.
My favorites though were the water babies. The sea otters were rollicking in the water. Rolling around, jumping. So cute. I think we watched them for a LONG time. The baby beavers were cute too. And there was the little sea lion. She was born in mid-June and was still being nursed. She was walking really well and swam really well, but she couldn’t get on the rocks in the middle of the tank. She tried really hard but she just couldn’t make it up there. I hear that she was able to do it today though.
Petting the kangaroo was a nice highlight too. Every time I go to the zoo, I hope they are close enough to the path for me to touch, but never until this year. I expected them to have wiry fur, but they were soft. Baleigh crawed through the stingray tank and into the meerkat habitat. She laughed at me when I ran from the “Bat flight” display. But she was just getting even with me for laughing when she ran from the Hornbill.
After the zoo, we headed back to my neighborhood because it was the day for me to pick up my weekly vegetable box from the local farm. While we were at the host house, we saw two domestic kitties. The black kitty was owned by the family and he was really friendly. There was also a stray who was a buff tabby with white paws. He was a cutie … he had the extra toes on each front paw. The stray was also very friendly, and we don’t know what happened to his owners. I was talking to the neighbor there and discussed getting him neutered. Cross your fingers that she does it!
Now it was time for dinner! We texted Matt and then headed to Station Square and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, where I forgot to order fries, as my other cousin says that they are the best. I ordered green beans instead. But then we had dessert. I had a rum cake, and it was really tasty … and really small.
We rode the Monongahela Incline to the top and took pictures of the City and walked all the way up Grandview Avenue, and down the Duquesne Incline. Then walked to the Station Square parking lot and came home. I got lost in the parking garage. Really, I did. 
We were all exhausted, we uploaded the photos, Bay and Matt watched Hannah Montana. Eventually we all went to bed. Matt and I (surprisingly for me) were up at 9:00 and Baleigh slept to 10:30. I must have worn her out!
Friday morning, we dropped some paper off at the shelter and took the quick 10 cent tour. She was invited back to hang out in medical another time. We drove back to her house (why does that trip seem so much shorter when there is someone with you) and I came back home and was glad to not have to drive again that day.
I really enjoyed myself. Baleigh is so smart and pretty and she is a joy to hang out with. She helped to make my birthday week one of the best I’ve ever had!