Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

Last Sunday we went to the LA Zoo. The zoo is not the easiest to navigate. It's very spread out and I seem to get lost everytime we're there. We've taken Zach before, but this was the first time he actually cared about seeing the animals and was excited about them. We thought it was going to be cold and gray, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day. Jeff almost wished he'd worn shorts for a minute!



There is a huge play area at the far end of the zoo, which we hit first. We figured we could see the big animals first and if the bug pooped out we'd just miss the little animals.



Zach loved the orangatangs! He must take after him mom! We stayed here for at least 20 minutes watching them play.


A few more animal pics



After the zoo, we went down the street a bit to Travel Town. It's a train museum where you can climb on actual trains and go inside the cars. Zach wasn't as enamored with that as we thought he would be. He much preferred the rocks that lay around the railroad tracks. I swear, this kid and rocks!
Jeff thought he'd really love this little train ride that goes around the outskirts of the museum and sounds like a real choo-choo. Daddy definitely got it right!


He loved every second of the train ride! He cheered and clapped and laughed and yelled "Choo Choo!" the entire time! In fact, when it was time to get off the train, the first thing he yelled was, "More!". OMG, it was so much fun to see him love it so much! What is it with boys and trains??

2nd Annual Parent's New Year's Eve Party at the Press house!

I think we've started a tradition! We had our first New Year's Eve party for our friend's with kids last year and it was such a hit we did it again this year! We started at 6pm, everyone brought an appetizer or dessert, our friend's Jim and Julie brought their Wii, and we celebrated the big ball drop at 9pm with New York! It was such a fun time! Our friend, Daniel (three kids) said to me, "Man, I'm so glad you have this party. Leah and I figured we wouldn't have a fun New Year's Eve for at least 10 years!"
Now, don't let the whole kid thing throw you off. There were still many drinks to be had. And some had many, many , MANY drinks.



There were toys everywhere and the kids liked to try out the kareoke machine

Aurora enjoying the bouncy house

I can't believe I never made the softball team. Look at that stance!

A Zach sandwich

A few days later, Cheri and her boyfriend, Brandon stopped by for a bit on their way home from Long Beach. I was sooo happy to see her and to finally meet this man she's been yammering about for the past 6 months! (Just kidding, Cheri! I love your yammering!) We didn't get any pics of Brandon (poor guy), but Jeff, always the thinking one of the picture group got us to pose.

Cheri has great boobs, but Jeez! It looks like I'm practically resting my head on her lovely mamma jammas! Maybe I have boobie envy since Zach sucked the life out of mine.

Christmas! Finally!

Boy, oh boy, I am a slacker with the blogging lately! Sorry about that! Christmas kind of took all of my time...but now it's over so I'm back on the blogging wagon.
On Christmas Eve we went up to my parents house. It's a 2.5 hour drive and Zach did really well. He only slept for about 40 minutes in the car, which is usually a three hour nap...he took a cat nap later in the afternoon to make up for it. My parents couldn't wait to see Zach and were impressed by his vocabulary and understanding. Both have really taken off in the last month! On Christmas morning, instead of the usual showering, getting pretty for the inevitable Xmas morning pictures, we rolled out of bed, threw clothes on and dove into the gifts! I think the years of having nice looking Xmas morning pics are a thing of the past. Now I'll look like every Mom on America's Funniest Home Videos on Xmas morning. Oh well.

I thought Zach would go crazy over the ridable lion Santa brought him, and he obliged by running up to it and pointing out his eyes and saying "eyes".
And then he was over it.
(sigh)
He had a great time opening his gifts, and helped open everyone's gifts as well.


This was by far the favorite gift of the morning. I found it (I mean, Santa found it) for $30 online at Walmart! Jeff was none too thrilled when he was looking at the measurements (before blow up) and saw that it was 7 feet wide. Eh, whatever. My kid will have fun and that's what matters. So what if we have to stand up to watch tv.

Over the next several days we ate and ate and ate. Oh, and we played cards when Mr. Bug went night-night. Oh, and then we ate some more.
There was also a huge storm that came through and dumped snow up in the park (Sequoia). It's a steep incline to the park and beyond, so we were able to get to snow in 10 miles. My kid is VERY adventurous. He has no fear. He'll stand and climb and spin until he crashes into the furniture. He does NOT, however, like snow.
He did not want to stand in it, walk in it and insisted on becoming Velcro and cling to me or Jeff. Oh, and he didn't want to throw snow balls, but he did want to throw buckeyes (big nuts from the buckeye tree), so long as they were handed to him and he didn't have to root around in the snow.




He finally DID warm up to the whole snow idea, as long as he could climb up huge boulders.
The next several days, instead of taking Zach back to the not so great snow, we took him to the river instead. He loved, LOVED throwing rocks into the water and could have done it ALL day. Truly, I don't think he would have gotten tired of it, EVER. I can't seem to find the pics of that, but I'll post them when I find them.