I know you're wondering if that's just some strange cult thing, but NaBloPoMo is much more innocent. No dancing with rattlesnakes or talking white lizards in the desert required. It stands for "National Blog Posting Month" and is a challenge for the month of December. As far as I know it started just last year when someone decided that instead of National Novel Writing Month (where folks write a whole novel in November!) that they could commit to posting on their blog for every day of the month. I thought it was a neat idea last year, but this year I'm ready to belly up to the keyboard and give it a shot myself. Hence the fancy little badge over on the right side of the screen. I figure I've been so bad about posting lately and this might just give me the kick in the pants I need to get my ass in gear. (Even as sore as it STILL is!)
So here's post number one!
Halloween 2007
Nicky and Tom came to pick me up at work and we headed off for Boo at the Zoo. We did this last year, but at only 7 months old Nicky was pretty blitzed out. We expected this year to be much more exciting and didn't even bring the stroller (you may start laughing here).
Ready to go! We've been changed, bug sprayed and costumed. Where's the candy?
We met up with a buddy from work and his cute little boy and in my haste to snap a photo of his son (batman) before they went into the zoo I completely and utterly ignored said buddy's wife. I only realized that I didn't greet, nor look at, his wife when I was drifting off to sleep last night. Apparently I've lost all social skills. (Maybe the surgeon cut that part out by mistake. Who knew that's where the epicenter of social nicety nestled?) I did apologize at work today by the way. I am a dork.
Anyway, we waved them on into the zoo and headed for the back of the line to get in. It was a very long line, but moving pretty quickly. We were also trying to keep an eye out for Nicky's Grandma who was supposed to meet us there. We saw her just before we were going into the park and she joined our little group. Yay!
Waiting in the super long line:
So for the uninitiated (which I imagine is the majority of anyone stumbling across this blog), Boo at the Zoo is a free program at the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo. This is at our local community college and the students and zoo folks decorate the path through the zoo for Halloween, dress up and let kids say trick or treat and get candy. They usually have a radio station there, and the cost of admission is one canned good per person. It's all a big donation drive to collect food for folks in need over the holidays. Not sure how much they pulled in this year, but last year it was over 6,000 cans of food!
So anyway, lots of camera opportunities along the path and I even had Nana's camera with me to take a few photos and movies, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it so mostly took photos of the back of Nicky's head. But with JM there I'm sure she must have gotten a few cute ones with her super awesome professional camera. I'll post them when we get them!
About halfway through the zoo I was really ready to be done. I think I was zoo'd out before Nicky even. But we stuck with it (not really much choice actually) and made it through. I think it probably took about an hour to go through. That was the longest I'd stood up and walked since the surgery and my behind was not happy with me. Ow. Poor Tom ended up carrying Nicky for most of the walk. It was just too crowded and he was too overwhelmed to stay down for more than a minute or two at a time. But he was more interested this year, and stayed happy which was nice. Especially since the little girl behind us was having a sugar-induced meltdown.
After we were through the zoo we hightailed it to the car and to the grocery store to grab some sandwiches for dinner and a bag of candy in case we had any trick or treaters show up when we got home. We had two groups of kids show, so good thing Tom bought 3 bags of candy! I really must take some to work next week. (IF it makes it through a 3 day weekend uneaten- HA!)
This year instead of reaching desparately for his binky once we got in the car, he reached for a lolly pop. Yummo! - Notice though he's still naked after Boo at the Zoo. Costumes get HOT in Florida!
All in all I think it went pretty well. I don't know if we'll do it again next year though. I just heard about a cool idea to have a Trunk-or-Treat. And that sounds like FUN! I might have to figure out a group to put one of these on for us. Maybe the libraries? Maybe Tom's church? We'll see.
And there's the post! HA! Done with 6 minutes to spare before midnight!
0 comments:
Post a Comment