Mommy/Son Date at the Zoo

Hunter and I spent the day together at the Roger Williams Park Zoo yesterday.  We were planning on meeting up with the Trossello Trio, but my mommy-brain had read an invite for Sunday as an invite for Saturday, so it ended up just being the two of us (Alex was busy working on a project all day, thus why he was not in the mix...in case anyone is wondering).  Bubs and I don't get much mommy/son fun days out, so this ended up being a really special time for the two of us. We had a blast.  Hunter loved seeing all the animals he reads about in his favorite books come to life.  The zoo also held a Halloween special yesterday where kids got to come in their costumes and trick-or-treat at various stations for some goodies. Unfortunately for me, that meant that lots of little kids were walking around carrying their plastic pumpkin buckets and Hunter was bummed out that he didn't have his (I didn't even think to bring it!!).  He tried not-so-stealthily stealing other children's buckets, and I had to give him the speech several times about how he can't just go up to strange people and grab things from them, but I still don't think that point got across as much as I would have liked it too.

Here are a handful of photos documenting our day. Keep in mind that it is a near impossibility to be on Hunter-watch out in public and a photographer at the same time, so I didn't get too many good shots, but I think they are good enough to throw into our Project-Hunter's-Life -Year-Two scrapbook.

The first exhibit was the Zebras...Bubbers was fascinated at seeing on of his favorite animals in person

A wild African Dog doing what they do best...shredding the meat off of the bones of some creature lower on the food chain

We were up close and personal to this elephant eating its pumpkin snack.

This seal had lots of fun showing off to all the little kids who watched from outside the glass in awe.

Such a good helper, Hunter didn't want me to have to do all the work with pushing the carriage, so we took turns

Bubs wanted so badly to be able to sneak through the wooden gate to get a closer view of the giraffes

But alas he was unsuccessful, so he will just have to settle for this closeup shot

Cutest thing ever...this miniature goat stuck his face through the gate to sniff Hunter's hand.  Bubs thought it was hilarious.  These two became best friends upon first meeting!!

The goat asked if he could sleep over our house since it wasn't a school night, but I said we already had to much going on this weekend, maybe some other time.

And on that farm he had some sheep, ei-ei-ooooo

Bubbers had to crouch down to get a better view of the boring flamingos

Tortioses

Bubby-bo loved this little coin donation twirly thing so much he wanted to me to go to the nearest bank to take out all his cash in pennies just so he could keep doing it....I said no

A sleeping crocodile

A grumpy camel

A resting bald eagle

Our last stop was our second visit to the zebras. Hunter begged and pleaded that I let him go in to say Hi, but at that point the zoo was on the verge of closing so he had no time.

After the zoo kicked us out Hunter and I went to the local IHop to get some dinner.  He was more interested in making a mess by throwing the fruit around than eating, but I at least got to fill my tummy up.  Once we were done there we headed back to the zoo to catch the Jackolaturn Spectacular Tour at 6pm.  I am so glad that we got our tickets earlier in the day, as we got to bypass hundreds of folks standing in line. Despite that though, we were still jam packed in with a large group of people waiting to start the tour. I really had no idea what to expect at this thing, but I certainly wasn't planning on long-claustrophobic lines. At this point Bubs was pretty tired having only had a 45 minute nap thus far and he has yet to learn the virtue of patience and the rule of "no cutting in line" so it was a struggle to keep him calm.  I sang Old MacDonald Had A Farm as long as I possibly could (this is his current favorite settle-down song) and prayed and hoped that we would come to the beginning of the tour soon so that he would have something to catch his attention. We did this for about 30 minutes when we came up to a sign next to a line on the ground that said "You are now 30 minutes from the beginning of the tour".  Ha...with that I said "Screw this" (excuse my language) and got out of line and started heading back to the car.  At that point I realized that I could see the grand finale of the pumpkin tour from where we stood, so I put on the invisible cloak that only us little people can use and sneaked our way against the grain to get into where the display was.  Even though we only got to see the ending and even though it took us a half hour of standing in line before we rebelled against the courtesy of standing in line it was totally worth it.  Hunter was amazed at the sights around him, it even gave him his second wind.  I could never capture the amazingness of it all on camera, but here are few shots we did get:

Yes these are all real pumpkins

These are mini pumpkins decorating the trees above the display