a surprise

Kevin has to be out-of-town quite a bit this month, so he surprised me a few days ago and told me he had arranged for Jeff and Amy to keep Grace so we could have a day-long date on Saturday! Our day o' fun yesterday included a trip to the zoo, lunch at a Thai restaurant, a shared fruit smoothie at our favorite drink stop, wonderful hour-long massages (for a whopping $3.50 USD), and finally to our favorite coffee shop. It was fun to be carefree for a few hours. Thanks Jeff and Amy for babysitting! You are wonderful!


I was pleased with the landscaping at the zoo. We've lived here almost three years but this was our first trip. Aren't we terrible for not taking our child with us? (We will later, but this was a scouting mission!) Can you tell from this picture we are in the year of the pig?

The dolphin and sea lion show we saw was ok, but the real show happened when some monkeys escaped from their cages! It was ironic, because not even an hour earlier I was talking with Kevin and conjecturing about how often they have animals escape. For some reason, there was a hole in the monkey cage, and the smaller monkeys made it through. Soon after I took this picture, a small crowd gathered. One lady (I assume a zoo employee) put her umbrella over the hole so more monkeys couldn't escape while another worker chased the 2 fugitives to a separate monkey area.
The white tigers did not have a big place to stay. This particular tiger was put into a smaller cage before a zookeeper came to attend to him. We thought he was going to give the tiger a shot, but he just put some sort of yellow liquid into his cage without actually touching the tiger. Not sure why he just "spewed" the liquid at him, but the tiger didn't like it and swiped and growled in protest.
Just remember, you should never stride around ferocious animals...
Here's our Thai lunch (not authentic, but good enough), which included pinapple rice, barbecued beef on a stick, shrimp cakes, and cucumber with Thai sauce. Deee-lish!

On another note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY today to my mom, Judy Gerlt. We love you, Mom and wish we were there to celebrate with you!