happy NOON year's eve

rain forest

caleb, elisa, and josh checking out the turtles and alligator

ball raising at noon

eating free chips waiting noon in the freezing cold!

uncle matt and the girls

jonny watching a turtle check-up

zoo tiger photo op

the whole gang headed to the cleveland zoo for NOON YEAR'S EVE.  IT WAS COLD!!!!

there was hardly anyone there, probably because the windchill was about 15degrees or worse, but we all had a really fun time!  they had some games and giveaways for the kids, and they even got to make a birdfeeder/ noise maker from old water bottles.  

in the winter at the zoo, the 'northern trek' is kept open where north american animals are, like bears, wolves, seals, bald eagle, and a few other animals that can withstand the cold and snow of cleveland.  unfortunately, it's a little hike over there, uphill; but we didn't let that stop us.  actually, only matt, lydia, jessy, jonny, joe, and i made it all the way to the wolf house.  the rest got sidetracked at the animal clinic which is much closer to the front gate.

after taking a minute to warm up, we headed back down the snow covered hill, and met up with everyone at the clinic where they were doing check-ups on a few small animals (we saw them working on box turtles).  jonny really liked it, but it was a little hard for him to see what they were doing, since the turtle is so small.

we headed back to the front gate area where they did a 'ball raising' and we counted down from 10.  i don't think the kids really understood, caleb liked it the most, but everyone was happy eating free bags of chips that they were handing out.

then we rushed over with the whole crowd to the rainforest, because it's always a balmy 82 degrees there and had some lunch.  then we saw some more animals, sloths, orangutans, snakes, frogs, creepy bugs, and lots more!

it was so funny because josh was up on a ledge looking at some kind of spider, and he jumped down and started running in circles and going nuts, we weren't sure what was wrong with him.  then we noticed that there was a lace from his boot that was 'chasing' him!  he thought that it was a creepy bug and was trying to get it off of his leg.

we had a really fun time, but we were all pretty exhausted by the end of the day!

happy NOON year's!