The family took a trip to the zoo on a cold winter day. Surprisingly, the animals were very animated. It was probably the most active I’ve ever seen them.

Guinness reports a new record for the “Cutest Hairball Ever”. Ken and I were sitting here laughing at this picture he took several weeks ago at the zoo. I said it kind of looked like she was diving out of the lion’s mouth. He said it looked like the lion was coughing her up. Either way, the picture makes me laugh as she is doing her best lion impersonation for the camera.

This summer our local zoo has added several new exhibits and fun things for the kids, and since we are members and frequent the place quite often, we have been enjoying the new entertainment options. The zoo has always offered a fun little water fountain that the kids can run around in. Of course if you have watched our home movies from last summer, you know that what Edie really likes to do is just stick her butt over the water and stand there. It must be a weird sensation or something because it seems to be pretty popular with all the kids, not just my little exhibitionist.

Anyway, this summer they have added the “Foam Zone”, which consists of a sectioned off part of the water fountain by a humongous inner tube and an industrial bubble machine. The kids go nuts over it, including mine. I had not let her get in there all summer because there’s always been a gazillion kids already there and some spots the bubbles are actually higher than she is tall, and I was afraid that she might get hurt.

She’s never understood why she couldn’t get in while the other kids could, and every time we played in the fountain, she would whine about wanting to join in the bubble fun. When she was lucky enough for the wind to blow a patch of bubbles over the inner tube and into the fountain, she would run to scoop them up like a certain yellow fish coveting the bubbles from the treasure chest, and I of course, felt like a heel because I was denying her the fun all the other kids were having.

However, now that school has started back here, she’s in luck because no one is at the zoo anymore and very few kids are playing in the Foam Zone. So Friday, I let her get in and run around like a maniac. I love watching her have those experiences where she gets lost in how much fun she is having and the world around her is non-existent. She was in “the zone”…pun intended. I think a bomb could have gone off over at the carousel, and she wouldn’t have even noticed all the plastic flying animals overhead. Man, does she know how to have a good time!

That kid really loves the water.