Our little monkey turns 3

February 28th--Happy 3rd Birthday, Austin! Austin started the day off opening his gift which was a Real Madrid 'futbol' uniform (jersey, shorts & socks). He loved it and is very cute in the whole outfit. Then, he enjoyed some donuts for breakfast. After breakfast, we all got ready and headed to the Madrid Zoo & Aquarium. It was a great zoo! We saw every animal you can possibly imagine...white storks, flamingos, penguins, zebras, giraffes, elephants, pandas, kangaroos, koalas, buffalos, monkeys, hippos, rhinos, snakes, fish, sharks, birds, bald eagles, lions, tigers, and bears...OH MY! Abby's favorite animal was the hippopatamus. Ever since seeing Madagascar 2, she thinks they are very funny animals with big bellies and small booties. We watched 4 hippos for a while. At first, they were out of the water and so we couldn't leave until we saw all of them get in the water. There was one that had long teeth hanging out of his mouth and he was not nice. We decided he was angry because he needed to go to the dentist. :-) Then, we saw the monkeys, Austin's favorite. They were being fed so we watched them all fight over the food. It was definitely a site and it's amazing how human acting they really are. Watching the monkeys eat made us hungry so off we went to find a place to eat lunch. Right next to the eating spot was a wonderful playground. We ate a quick bite and the kids were off to play for a while. We then attempted to go watch the Dolphin show. It was really funny because we were sitting there waiting for it to start, a woman came over the speakers and said a bunch of stuff in Spanish (obviously we couldn't understand her), then everyone in the crowd got up from their seats and left. Mike looked at me and said "I guess it's cancelled?" We started laughing, but continued to sit there like we were still trying to figure out what was going on. Anyway, it was definitely cancelled and we were a little disappointed, but were definitely able to find many other things to do. We spent about 6 hours at the zoo and probably could have been there longer, but it looked like it was going to start raining and we didn't want to get stuck in it. So, we left and headed to the Metro Station. As we were walking, we asked Austin if he had a good birthday at the zoo and he said "Yes, but I haven't had cake yet." We decided we needed to find the boy a cake so when we got off the subway by our apartment, we went to the bakery. We had a little trouble ordering in the all Spanish speaking bakery, but we explained it was Austin's "cumpleaños" and they pointed out a chocolate truffle cake. We then went by the pizza place to get pizza for dinner. The pizza and the cake were very good. Austin had a great 3rd birthday!