Zoo Photos

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and oldest son were away. My youngest and I went to the zoo.

Here are some pictures.

Gruntled Sour Weisse

I'm doing a bit of a brewing experiment. I've decided to brew a Berliner Weisse. I'm going to sour this Berliner Weisse with lactic acid rather than adding souring bugs to the fermentation. I'm not sure how it will turn out, so I decided to brew a small batch.

If you would like to see my recipe, check out on the SheppyBrew website:

Gruntled Sour Weisse

Yesterday, my son and I went to the zoo together, and it wasn't until we were on the way home that I decided that I would brew for sure. We stopped by my most local homebrew shop and picked up malts and yeast.

Spring Break

Here are couple of pictures from spring break so far.

Day 1:  We visited the USS Midway.  It is very cool.  It is HUGE.

Day 2:  We visited the World Famous San Diego Zoo.

I'll probably post more pictures later.

Zoo pictures

So, as you may or may not know, the SheppyBrew Beer Model left her husband and kids so she could sail around tropical waters last week.  She finally came home late Sunday night.  You'll be glad to know that it appears that she had a good time.

One of the things that the rest of her family did while she was gone was go to the Denver Zoo.  We go to the Denver Zoo a lot, and if you are one who has been following the blog for awhile, you've seen lots of pictures of the kids at our Zoo over the years.  We are "members", so when we go, we just show them our card and they let us in "for free".  Obviously, we pay yearly, but trust me.  It has saved us a small fortune to be Zoo members rather than paying each time we go.

Here are some pictures from this time:

This is actually one of their favorite parts of the zoo.

In front of Dolly (the elephant)

Another of their favorite parts of the zoo is climbing on this hippo.

And they like to spend time jumping.

Action shot.  I'm sure Tyler took a couple steps after he landed and claimed that he can jump as far as the ostrich.

This bird and I had a conversation about women and how sometimes they desert you for a week making you take care of the kids.

This guy was pretty grumpy.  Just like me.   I wonder if his wife had deserted him so she could sail around tropical waters.

This is one of those binoculars to see lions better.  Connor looked at me instead.

We see peacocks all the time at the Denver Zoo, but rarely do we see them showing off like this.

Big kid attacking the bears.

Little kid being attacked by bears.

Connor just wanted me to take this picture.

Here is what mama was doing while we were wandering around the zoo:  Drinking.

The SheppyBrew Beer Model endorsing a non-SheppyBrew beer.  Traitor!

If you would like to see more photos of the Beer Model's trip, follow this link.  By the way, there are two women in these pictures.  Only one of them is my wife.

Zoo Zoo Zoo

We went to the Denver Zoo today.  It was a very nice day.  Mid to Upper 70s, which is pretty warm for November in Denver.

Here is Connor Showing us his map.

I walked ahead of Mommy and the kids just a bit while going to see the lions.  I heard the male roar really loud and run after one of the females and then got mean with another of the females.  I guess they were nagging him just too much and he snapped.  Mommy and the kids heard the roar, but missed the spectacle.  It was sort of exciting.  Lions roar very loud.

Here are a couple of lions

There are a few baby tigers in with their momma.  We had never seen them in there before.  It was sort of cool to see them playing today.

Momma and Baby Tigers

A couple more babies.

The Beer Model's Babies

A dragon that really cooperated for the photo op.

A kid who really cooperated for the photo op.

A kid who sort of cooperated.

The asked me to take this picture.

Here is a video of a fox who was searching for a little bone.  The zoo keeper had hidden it for him as we got there.  It did not take the fox long to find out where the bone was.  If you are a facebook reader of this blog, you will actually have to go to blog.ericshepard.com to see the video of the fox.

Tonight I tried one of the all-grain recipe versions of my world famous Phat & Tyred Ales.  I compared it to a bottle of the partial mash version.  Visually, these are right on.  They taste almost exactly alike.  There is a slight difference in the AG version that is hard for me to describe.  I guess I would say it is smoother.  Maybe better blended.  Not sure, but it does have something extra that makes me like it just a bit better.  I am sure this is something I would not notice unless I was tasting these side-by-side.

All grain vs Partial Mash of Phat & Tyred Ale

So beautiful.  So delicious.

I think I better brew some more of the Beer Model's favorite beer (Buckwheat's BPA).  According to my Inventory, we are down to 7 bottles.  We do have a whole "party keg", but that needs to be something we drink over a day or two.  It would be nice to bring it to some sort of party so others could help us drink that.

Cheyenne Mt. Zoo

Today, we went South to Colorado Springs and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The zoo is built on the side of a mountain. You make your way up the mountain to see the animals. It is pretty cool.

Some other cool things are how close some of the animals are.

We fed some crackers to giraffes.  We got to pet a wallaby.  A mountain lion walked inches away from us.

One thing the CMZ has that no other zoos I've ever been to have is a chair lift.  From the chair lift, we saw the tiger and the grizzly bears.  Both were located where we would not have been able to see them as well down below.

If you ever are in Colorado Springs.... the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is an excellent activity.  The whole family had lots of fun today at the zoo.

Denver Zoo

We went to the zoo last weekend.

FW: Happy Zoo Year

Playing with the new phone. Note the huge photo below. Go ahead ... just click on it.

The first time I sent this from the phone, blogspot only got part of the message and did not include the picture. I figured this was a phone setting issue. Then, I forwarded it again and got the whole thing.... including this HUGE nice resolution photo. I need to ask my phone to reduce the resolution for these images if I am going to be emailing them like this.

Now, I'm not sure what the issue was before. I'll have to keep playing with the phone and blogging with it I guess.

---

From: Eric Shepard <eric@sheppytect.com>
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 2:43 PM
To: Esheppy BlogSpot <esheppy.jeremy@blogger.com>
Subject: Happy Zoo Year

Did you realize that we just had a rare new years eve blue moon? Well we did.

I just got a new smart phone. I have been wanting a new one for for some time, and verizon was willing to sell me one for about $25, so I went ahead and got a new one. It is nice and new. Mostly the functionality is about the same, but it is nice to have a battery that lasts more than a few hours.

We are at the zoo today. It is a good day to be at the zoo. The animals seem to be more active and available on cool days than they are in the hot of summer. Plus there were not very people here today crowding us.

Anyway, I am just making sure I can still phone blog.

Happy zoo year!

Happy Zoo Year

Did you realize that we just had a rare new years eve blue moon? Well we did.

I just got a new smart phone. I have been wanting a new one for for some time, and verizon was willing to sell me one for about $25, so I went ahead and got a new one. It is nice and new. Mostly the functionality is about

Boys' Weekend

My wonderful, beautiful wife left us a couple of weeks ago to go to our church's women's retreat. I am not sure why women would need to retreat in general, but that is a topic for another time. The fact that my wife thought it appropriate to leave two young boys in the care of her incompetent husband is completely shocking, but again not really what this particular blog entry is about. Really, it is about nothing except sharing of a couple of pictures for those of you who tragically don't get to see the boys very often.On Saturday, we went to the zoo. We have a membership to the zoo, so any particular visit is free for us. The boys like the zoo. It was a nice day. I like to see animals. So, we went to the zoo.

We did the usual zoo stuff. We rode the carousel (I still call these merry-go-rounds, but apparently I've been referring to them incorrectly all these years). We sat on various statues around the zoo. We saw all kinds of animals... some of which even felt like cooperating with us by being somewhere we could see them ... some of them even moved around some. We ate lunch and the boys got ice cream. Tyler even got a close-up picture of the tiger yawning (pretty cool... don't you think). As you can see, tiger teeth are on the largeish size.

After the zoo, we came home and had a movie night with pizza and popcorn (Daddy even had a few beers. All in all, a very successful day ... all while our wife and mommy was off doing God-Knows-What with other women on her "retreat".

And the next day, we had to entertain ourselves AGAIN. We headed over to Golden. Nothing real special was going on in Golden. We just went to the playground and then walked along Clear Creek and played on the rocks and in the water while heading towards the Capital Grill in downtown Golden. Where the boys got ice cream again and Daddy got a beer again.

When we got home, mommy was there. She did not seem to care about my crying and gnashing of teeth from the wild, crazy kids and my attempt to control them.

It was a nice weekend.
Hopefully by the time next women's retreat comes along, I'll be able to convince Tracy not to leave her poor kids in my incapable hands.