The entire reason for this Atlanta trip was for Ashleigh to see her beloved panda bears in person. There are only four zoos in the United States with panda bears. The Atlanta Zoo is the only zoo in the world to have twin panda bears born inside. Even more impressive is that the Atlanta twin pandas are the only known twins to ever both survive because normally one of the bears is abandoned by its mother.
The twins, Mei Lun and Mei Huan - they were born in July 2013.
Mama bear - she is on loan from China for one million dollars a year!!
Mama bear was very rough with her cubs, which the zoo keeper told us was normal and perfectly okay. She is training them to be tough and resilient. In this picture, she is pulling one of her babies off of the tree.
The babies were so playful.
The baby that was pulled down from the tree decided it was time to eat or drink, which was fun to watch. Here he is climbing up the log to get to the bowl.
He made it!
Uh oh, the mean mama is back. She grabbed him and threw him to the ground again!
The baby took a minute to recover from the hard fall while mama took over the bowl.
Adorable! When they are born they are the size of a stick of butter and completely blind, deaf, and helpless.
Mama bear never stood still for a good picture. She was all over the place. I took 50 pictures of them and these were the best pictures I got! We were so lucky to have seen them so close. At first we were disappointed they were inside when we arrived, but it was great because we were able to watch them up close for a long time. We were told it was usually crowded around the pandas, but there was hardly anyone around when we were there. Ashleigh was so happy, but wanted to go back the next day to see them again. Thank goodness for pictures!
Our good friends from North Carolina met up with us in Atlanta which made for a fun weekend! The kids picked up right where they had left off and were instant buddies again! We wished we lived closer to them so we could see them more often :(
We did check out some of the other animals after visiting the pandas :) This is one of Owen's favorites - the flamingos. He loves how they stand on one foot.
The lions had babies too! There were three baby cubs with mama.
Owen was excited to see kangaroos because we do not have them in our zoo. They were fun to watch hop around.
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