Zoo

 

We have annual passes to the zoo and it makes it so nice (and easy) to go whenever we feel like it. We decided to take Ava on New Year’s Eve, little did we know they had a HUGE party planned and they call it Noon Year’s Eve.

 

We had told Ava when we were on our way that there was a new baby giraffe, of course I didn’t give my child enough credit because I told Adam she probably won’t realize it is a baby since, you know, a baby giraffe doesn’t really look much smaller than an adult giraffe. She wanted to head to the giraffes as soon as we arrived and she spotted the “baby” immediately- I should have known better than to think she wouldn’t have figured it out- way to go mama!

We were able to see the lion really well. He was up walking around and got pretty close to where we were standing. Usually they are laying around and not really moving a whole lot.

Ava loves the elephants as well. She thinks they are funny since we went one time and they were splashing themselves with the water. This time they were eating and it had started to get crowded due to the party so we didn’t stay long.

The nicest part about our annual passes is that we don’t feel like spending an hour or two at the zoo and leaving is wasting money so there isn’t any pressure to see everything and spend all day there. Another nice thing is the ability to skip the ticket line, which was extremely long on this particular day!

Growing up my favorite animals to see at the zoo were the flamingos, which Ava calls “mingos”, she seems to like them, but it might be because I told her they were my favorite. Now everytime she sees them she says, “mommy’s favorite”.

We had promised her a ride on the “round-round”, fortunately, unlike the fair, parents can accompany their child for free, because you know at the fair I’m certainly riding for myself, and if I didn’t have a child I would still ride it, right? ha!

We ended up stopping by the party briefly- very briefly. We were glad we did since we ran into some very dear friends, but since most things were too old for Ava and we had already been there for a little while, we knew Ava was getting close to naptime we headed out. She did score this party hat that she insisted on wearing on the ride home!

That evening we had a fire in our firepit and set off a few small fireworks, but Ava had started feeling bad and was super clingy so we ended up going in and putting her to bed. I think we were all in bed by 9:30- haha! So much for seeing the ball drop!