A Day Away - a trip to the zoo and Lake Erie

Saturday was such a beautiful day that we packed a cooler, threw sand toys in the car and went to Erie for the day.  Unlike our last trip to the zoo, which started with the car battery dying and ended with a power outage this trip went off without a hitch.  We didn't know when we got to the zoo that apparently it was "ZooBoo" day so our little guy was one of the few that wasn't wearing a costume.  Everything was pretty tacky with Halloween decorations all over the place but the animals were out and there was trick or treating to be had. We had so much fun. 

I'll take a couple of these for Christmas, please.

This cat would eat one of our kitties as an appetizer.

As would this one.  Little man was stuffing a Reese's peanut butter cup for this picture.  He doesn't really like sweets but I think it was the novelty of it.  Sparrows were playing in the stream in the tiger enclosure.  I wonder how often the tiger pounces a sparrow in front of visitors.

I don't remember what this is but they were adorable, cat-like with long faces.

Beautiful carnivorous plants.

After the zoo, we went to the lake for the rest of the afternoon.  The little man dug in the sand, my husband closed his eyes and I hunted up beach glass and pottery.

View from our quilt.  When it came time to pack up to go home I could not, for the life of me, find one of the little man's matchbox cars.  He had buried it in the sand and it was completely lost.  This made me terribly, unreasonably sad for the little toy.  It was an older Matchbox car, from the 70's maybe.  We had brought it home on one of our "thrift store exchange days" so it had already lived a full life before we found it. Then it came to our home.  Then it got lost on the beach.  Maybe some day some other kid will find it or someone with a metal detector will come along and scoop it up. Or, most likely, it will still be out there alone long after we all are gone.

Ridiculous things like this make me think about how fleeting life really is. 

But, these are the good days. The days to enjoy while we can.