My new toy

Hi all! Remember the many times I lamented our lack of digital camera? Well we used wedding money and some gift cards and treated ourselves to, no no...we invested in a Kodak Easy Share. 6.1MP, and we got a 1GB memory card, lots of neat features. So now my FO's will look much better! I have spent the better part of this afternoon trying to sort out the software...poor Phil got the brunt of that frustration I'm afraid, but I think I have it now, so here goes attempt #2 to blog this!
Wednesday we packed up our new toy, our kids and a picnic into a vehicle and headed out on a family trip to the Oaklawn Farm Zoo. If you've never been, I urge you to go. It's very nice. However, Wednesday was bloody hot! I recommend going later in the day, at 7pm they feed the beasts and I guess it's quite a show. We just couldn't stay that long, we were melting.
And when I say "family trip", I mean FAMILY!!! It was us 4, my aunt and her boyfriend, my cousin Karen, her husband and 3 kids, my parents and one of my brothers (the 17 year old is too cool for the zoo), my cousins Lori and Carole, with Lori's beau and Carole's daughter Dani. Carole is pregnant too, so there was another one lurking :). After the zoo we went to my Aunt BooBoo's (AKA Helen) house in Berwick for BBQ. It was a lot of fun.
I took advantage of the long drive to work on the accursed pink sock:

Then Grace took a break from chewing her toes...

To make a god-awful mess of my ball of yarn. It was a beautifully wound centre-pull ball...

And here I am on the side of the road in Berwick trying to make sense of it all (we pulled over for a bathroom break, I am not so crazy about my yarn that I made them pull over)

Sigh. I wasted prime knitting time getting that ball back in order.
We arrived at the zoo, and dug into our picnic. We had recieved a load of fresh crab from our groomsman Adrian, who is Captain of a lobster boat in Cape Breton. We shelled it and mixed it up to make sandwiches. Discovered that we'd forgotten the rolls. Oh well, it still tasted good, we laid it over the lettuce and munched away (if you haven't tasted crab...it's good, but it ain't lobster. Hey Adrian, lobster next time, 'kay?). Thankfully we'd packed forks.
After our feast, we made it into the zoo itself. Grace was in awe of the animals, she was too funny. We started out by the big African tortoises, who were cruising around their pen as fast as they could

Then Grace and I had the privilege of meeting a one week old turtle, too cute!

Next we saw the primate cages, Grace and Kate were fascinated by the lemurs who were strolling about

Except these guys weren't so active, I think they too found the heat to be a bit much...

Or they are just particularly lazy monkeys.
We tried to move on, but Alex was fascinated by the tortoises. He's a quiet delight of a child, and found the big, slow moving creatures just to his taste.

Of course, I took pics of the Llamas, this one is only a few weeks old. She had super soft hair, but was not yet used to people petting her a lot.

Next up, we met a baby goat who was able to squeeze through the fence to come and play. This is Evan (my 14 year old brother) making friends:

Grace got into the goat action too...and this little monkey who will not kiss her mother, her nana, or anyone else, could not wait to smooch a goat! Unfortunately she was doing it too fast for the camera to catch her at it, but I think she kissed all of them...

After we fed the goats and deer, then Cameron amused himself by running up and down the fence with a turkey, we moved on to the big cats. And they really are just big cats; beautiful, powerful...but pussycats just the same


Poor Kate, who did not nap in the car on the way down, crashed out:

So she missed this cutie-patootie baby monkey:

We decided to head out to BooBoo's place, but before we left, Cam had to try out the lion cut-out:

And so did my cheesy husband (husband! Still getting used to that), he also went into the cowardly lion routine:

When we arrived at BooBoo's the kids met the kittens who adopted my Aunt. She was out on the deck and this nursing mother (no more than a kitten herself) arrived starved. She fed her, then momma went back and brought the 3 kittens too. My big-hearted aunt took them all in, got them checked out by the vet and has plans to fix the momma. She is trying to find home for the kittens, who are ready to leave momma anytime now...and if Cameron and Beth had their way they would have found homes on Wednesday.
But look how cute!
I desparately tried to convince Phil that we should take this little one home, who Cameron named Zoe...but even Grace's love of the kitten couldn't sway him from his "No More Pets Until We Buy a House" rule (I don't remember agreeing to that, but he assures me I did). Tell me, could you have said no to this?:
Somehow he could, and we do not have a kitten.
After dinner, a walk through memory lane via old photographs...Grace had her first swing on a regular swing:

Then we were back on the road to go home. It was a long day (after 10pm before we got home!) but it was a great one. I'd do it again, maybe when it isn't so damn hot!

(BTW: I have been slowly loading pics onto the wed-site, and I updated the blog with the events of the day. As of this entry, I have loaded the rehearsal, the getting ready pics and the ceremony. I am waiting to get the disks back from our photographer, after she does her touch-up magic, before loading hers so all pics on the site are ones from friends. With any luck, I'll have prints organized in albums to bring to KOL next week. You can check out the site here
)