Winter Outing

Between all the illness and the frigid weather, the Molloy family has barely seen the light of day in recent weeks. We've been venturing out only when completely necessary and that has involved pretty much only dashing to and from the car. It's been so cold in fact that last week Ellie burst into tears on the walk from the car to the house because her hands were so cold. During the 45 second walk to the house. So when our neighbors asked us if we wanted to go to the zoo with them this morning, while our initial reaction was "are you crazy", we ended up saying "why not?" It's not exactly warm outside this weekend, but the upper 30's feels downright balmy in comparison to how cold it has been. And frankly were just not interested in being cooped up in the house all day yet again.

So we bundled up the kids and went to the zoo. It was actually a pretty great time to go to the zoo because, as you can imagine, there were very few people there so it felt like we had the place all to ourselves. While some animals were not outside, there were plenty of winter weather animals out and about to see and enjoy. We didn't bother bringing the stroller because we knew we weren't going to be there for too long and because we thought walking around would help keep Ellie warm. And warm she stayed - she never even once complained about being cold.

Ellie and Myles ran around from exhibit to exhibit, laughing and playing and actually not really showing all that much interest in the animals- but still having fun. The biggest hit of the morning seemed to be the ducks (which figures because you can see ducks pretty much anywhere, while the red pandas and giant snow leopards that were 3 feet away from us barely grabbed more than 2 seconds of attention) which Ellie and Myles watched and quacked at for at least 10 minutes.

Lucas seemed to enjoy his first trip to the zoo - he actually might have even been slightly more interested in the animals than Ellie was this trip. He zonked out from all the excitement after about an hour, but it is an outing we'll definitely have to take again soon - cold weather be damned!