This is a little collage I made about our day together, baking cookies and waiting for zoo lights.
We doubled the batches of both cookies. We made salted chocolate chip (my new favorite) and Funfetti cake batter sprinkle cookies. We had lots of left overs.
We had two plates of Funfetti cookies, and we had two plates of salted chocolate chip cookies. The other chocolate chip cookies are on the counter. There were so many cookies! But... when we packaged them, we only counted the people we thought were coming, the people we were told that were coming. When some extra people started coming, I was really worried that we wouldn't have enough cookies. I just didn't want to leave anyone out. I hate when that happens. We ended up having enough, and some people didn't want theirs. Before the rest of the group started showing up, Kenzie and I went into the gift shop to keep warm and wait. They had lots of cute stuffed animals, and they had adorable elephant stuff animals! I love elephants and had to get my pictures taken with them, and so did Kenzie. OF COURSE!!!
People started coming, and my friend, Jadee came along too. I knew she was coming, I was excited to see her! I haven't seen her in so long, two years! It's been way too long. We got our pictures taken with the otter who dances around the entrance of the zoo. It was really cute.
You will see that in every picture that I am in, my water bottle is either in my hands or in my arms. You can tease me about that later, but my water bottle is literally very important to me. We handed our tickets to the ticket takers and entered the zoo. Being with the big group of people was taking too long. We felt like they were going too slow, so Jadee, Kenzie and I all split and went our separate ways. As we were taking pictures, Kenzie held up her iPad and these probably eleven year old boys shouted, "Hey! Nice iPad." weirdos... we took some pictures along the way and we were kind of skittish because we didn't want to bump into the rest of the group. It was a fun sneak away.
Here is Jadee and Kenzie.
Here is a pretty red and blue tree lined pathway.
After the tree lined pathway, we came across these pretty hanging lights near the bears. We didn't see any bears, because it was dark and the bears are black colored, but the hanging lights were super cool! They reminded me of jelly fish.
I enhanced it a little bit so that you can see the purple in there.
We asked a zoo worker to take our picture by the lights. My pink sparkly case on my phone was turning the whole picture pink when I used flash on my camera, so I took my case off and it made my picture taking experience so much better.
Thank you nice zoo worker! This is (in order) Me, Kenzie and Jadee.
You can see my water bottle in my hands in the lower left corner. Not that you care, but I thought I would do a fun "where's waldo?" kind of search. As we walked on, we walked to the Zoo Concert Lawn. It was covered in a safari of animals. We really liked the giraffe putting the heart on top of the Christmas tree.
We walked passed a few kids from our group, and ran off. It was great. The concert lawn was so beautifully decorated. I loved the line up elephants. Little baby elephant in the back. Adorable! And I got a pretty good shot of the hippo. I tried to get a good shot of the elephants as they were in motion, so I had to snap fast.
It was so cold last night! Our hands were freezing! It was getting harder and harder to take pictures. We were in need of hot chocolate. We stepped into the Africafe right next door to the Concert Lawn. Kenzie is such a good friend, it was her treat. Thank you Kenzie! Jadee and Kenzie had soda, I had a delicious hot chocolate. It was the best hot chocolate I had ever tasted. I was worried it would be bitter, or way too sweet that it would burn my throat, but it was perfect. I did ask for no whip cream, but I am glad they put it on there accidentally. I think it added to it. We also ate some delicious fries. When we sat down, we asked a nice woman to take a picture of all of us. Usually, I don't trust people with my phone, but you just have to find trust worthy people and they looked nice. They were!
My water bottle is now in my arms... I am possessive.
It was a much needed break. We kept saying, "They'll never find us in here!" It was great. We walked toward the tree lined pathway again, and we saw this woman in a wedding dress, and this man in a tux, and following them was a photographer. They had their wedding pictures taken at zoo lights! How cute and adorable is that? Very cute! I got some pictures of them later, after zoo lights ended and we were waiting for my dad.
I will show some more later in the post. We walked around, and some more and came upon this beautiful picture made of lights. It was of the coast... I am thinking the Oregon coast. It was really pretty, and if you look really hard in the lower right corner, there is a purple seal or walrus hanging out on a rock.
Jadee then got a call from her ride, saying to meet up at the entrance, so we hurried out. We stopped at the view point really quick, because we wanted some pictures over looking the zoo lights. I took a couple of good ones, but this one showed the most. It also showed the pretty trees.
We left, and said good bye to everyone. While we were waiting for my dad, I took a picture of a really pretty purple and green tree by the parking lot. The naked branches were encrusted with purple lights and the trunk was wrapped in green lights. It was so pretty.
Also while we were waiting, we saw the newly married couple again. Everyone passed by them asking if there was a wedding, or said, "Look, is that a wedding dress?" "Ooooo there is a bride!" It was funny. Kenzie and I kept giggling. It's obvious what it is. Speaking of funny, there was this couple, awkwardly holding hands and awkwardly kissing. The girl broke off the hand holding and ran off the area where you wait in lines to get the tickets. She started running around in circles while looking up to the sky with her hands up and chanting something. I had to take a picture. It was BIZARRE.
It was a good night. I loved seeing everybody, and it was a fun night. Lots of things to see, I got to spend some time with my best friend, and took lots of pictures. Zoo Lights is a fun fun event, and I think it will get better every year.
Kenzie and I took pictures of our boots and us wearing our Miss Me jeans. It is kind of a closure picture.
I can't wait till next year!
Zoo Lights was so much fun!
