I Met a Sloth

Did I ever tell you about the time that I met a real sloth? It turns out that this is something that one can do simply by paying the zoo lots of nice money!

My older kid has always been the zoo's biggest friend, and the world's second-hardest human to shop for (her father is the world's hardest human to shop for, so it might be genetic), so her big Christmas gift from me last year was a day at the zoo with us, with the extra activities of a sloth encounter AND a dolphin encounter.

We met all the animals for Christmas!

But first: my favorite sea lion pose:

And, of course, at this zoo there are plenty of animals that you can meet without paying any extra money:

If you, a full-grown grown-up, don't leave the touch tank wet to your elbows, are you even a homeschool graduate?

As someone who has regular internal hysterics on the daily about the fact that all my family! Is not in the same room at the same time! Much less the same state!, just walking around the zoo together was my own favorite part of Christmas break:

Okay, I lied. My favorite part of Christmas break was THIS guy!!!

We got to hang out with him and coo over him and watch him eat snacks while his zookeeper talked about him and answered our questions--

(Look! He smiled at me!)

And then WE got to feed him snacks and take our photos with him! And then, THEN he curled up in a little ball!

He. Was. ADORABLE. 

Sloths don't seem like big thinkers, and there weren't really any thoughts apparent behind those big, brown eyes, but here he is scratching himself:

Oh, and here he is eating just one more snack:

Look how slowly he moves!!!

I swear I felt like I came out of a fugue state when we finally left our new sloth friend. I had no idea how much time had passed, what day it was, or what was happening in the outside world.

Might as well go visit the flamingos!

If nothing else, they'll scream you out of your meditative zone of contemplation!

We've seen free-range kangaroos at other zoos, but I think this is the first time we've visited since they've come to our zoo. There were very few people out on this cold late afternoon right before the New Year, so the kangaroos had plenty of room to hop all around in our vicinity and act like we weren't there:

I always forget that in December, the elephants and zebras and giraffes really aren't there, so we walked through a silent and empty African savannah--

--but the orangutans were around--

--and so were the dolphins!

After the dolphin show, my partner and kid went off to meet the stars of the show, while I hung out by the fire pit and got completely obsessed with the entity I call Twinkle Tree:

Every few minutes, it would do a whole light-up musical number, then go back to being a regular Twinkle Tree for another ten minutes or so. Even after the others came back from their encounter and wanted to walk around some more and tell me all about the dolphins they'd met, I was all like, "Shhh!!! Twinkle Tree is about to go off!"

I... may have sat there until I watched Twinkle Tree's entire repertoire. I don't even want to guess how long that took.

Eventually, my partner only managed to lure me away by wondering out loud if the Twinkle Tunnel also put on a show every few minutes...

It didn't, humph, but it was still pretty cool:

This turned out to be SUCH a good present! The kid loved it, of course, but I definitely loved it the most. We spent the whole day together, and although I sobbed miserably a couple of weeks later when we dropped her back at college, then spent another couple of weeks in a depression, pretty much just crying, listening to lavender country, and finishing the puzzle we'd worked on all break, I think all that together time shored up my emotional state so that I wasn't as much of a wreck as I usually am.

Yes, that was me NOT being as much of a wreck, ahem.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Two Days in Cincinnati with My Girl Scout Troop: On the First Day, We Met Kangaroos and Delved into DIY Oven Repair

In Girl Scouts, there's a standard travel progression that troops are encouraged to follow. As in, your troop should be comfortable taking field trips together before they take a day trip. They should master day trips before trying an overnight. Overnight trip mastery leads to regional travel, and regional travel mastery leads to national/international travel and longer trips, etc.

When I teach this travel progression to Girl Scout volunteers, however, I always emphasize that stepping up to, say, international travel doesn't mean that you don't go on field trips or overnight trips, anymore. Instead, you still take smaller trips, but you use those smaller trips as chances for the Girl Scouts to develop more sophisticated travel skills.

Case in point: the last time my Girl Scout troop took an overnight trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, that was their first overnight trip. They voted on the main event, an overnight in the Newport Aquarium, but my co-leaders and I planned the rest of the activities. The kids focused on building travel skills like carrying their own bags, unpacking and packing their sleeping bags, bedtime independence, staying with the group, getting along with each other for an extended period of time, picking what they wanted to eat, etc. 

This time around, we've taken I can't even tell you how many field trips and day trips together, several overnight trips, several two-night trips, a couple of regional and national trips, and an international trip. And this time around, the kids planned EVERYTHING. They wrote a packing list. They planned our meals. They decided on our activities. They voted on our accommodations. They decided what badge they wanted to earn (Ambassador Photographer!) and planned the activities to earn it. 

Essentially, they made themselves (and their two adult chaperones) an AMAZING overnight experience in Cincinnati!

First up: the Cincinnati Zoo! My kids and I have been to this zoo several times, but this was our first time since the free-range kangaroo habitat was created. Check out the roos!

As part of earning the Ambassador Photographer badge, all of us--kids and adults--concentrated on taking lovely animal and nature photos at the zoo.

The Masai Giraffe are really cool because their spots do NOT look like interlocking puzzle pieces:

Love this snoozy lion!

Does anyone else remember Meerkat Manor? One episode of Meerkat Manor used to be part of my bedtime ritual with the kids back when they were just a toddler and a preschooler, but they both swear that they still remember it, and we all still love meerkats!

I'm a meerkat!

The African painted dog is one of my two favorite animals at the Cincinnati Zoo, tied with the Florida manatee:

Remember Fiona, the baby hippo? Cincinnati Zoo is her home, and now she also has a baby brother named Fritz!

I have been to SOOO many zoos in my lifetime, and I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen a red panda 1) awake and 2) in motion. I think this is the third time ever, and the second time was also here!

Hanging out with the Galapagos tortoises is my favorite thing to do here. You can pet their shells!

Every now and then, I lent out my camera so that the Girl Scouts could have a go at using a DSLR--most of them were using their smartphones for photos, which is fine, but it's important to see how a professional-quality camera handles, too. So for a change, I have a few photos of ME on this trip!

I got so distracted taking a photo of one of my Girl Scouts petting a tortoise that I didn't notice that I was being stalked...

We just about closed that zoo down, then drove just a couple of miles north to our Airbnb near the Over the Rhine neighborhood. 

I am normally a BIG fan of a good Airbnb when I travel with my Girl Scout troop. Instead of divvying up into five separate hotel rooms, with kids isolated and poorly supervised, and no good group space for activities or meals, a good Airbnb lets us all hang out together, do activities together, and cook meals together. 

Unfortunately, this was not a good Airbnb. It was run by a company with several properties, and I will avoid that kind of setup in the future. I checked in with the host a couple of days before our visit to specifically ask about the oven, because my anxiety likes me to double-check shit like that, and with the host's reassurance that the oven had just been repaired and worked great, I let the kids plan a multitude of cooking projects for our evening and morning there. I made several pounds of pizza dough and cookie dough so the kids could make personal pizzas and have a cookie challenge, and we packed eggs and sausage and frozen hashbrowns so they could make breakfast sandwiches the next morning.

The first kid was literally putting her pizza in the oven when she stopped and said, "Um, I don't think it's preheated yet?"

Thus began my multi-hour saga of attempting to contact the host to help me with the oven, and the host's multi-hour saga of successfully dodging any attempt to be of actual service. It seemed like the gas line wasn't actually turned on to the oven part, just the stovetop, but the host kept texting me to turn the knob in a different direction, or turn it more forcefully, or pull the oven away from the wall and check behind it(?!?), and completely ignored my requests that someone actually, you know, just come over and turn the knob themselves or look behind the oven if it was supposedly so simple. Ugh! 

Fortunately, we're Girl Scouts, so my co-leader figured out a hack that let the kids more or less bake their pizzas on the stovetop, but they didn't turn out great, and the kids (and I!) were all pretty sad. The cookies worked okay in the microwave, and the next day, every kid who didn't already know how to cook eggs on the stove learned that useful life skill!

Fortunately, these hungry Girl Scouts had a BIG food adventure planned on our second day in Cincinnati. Stay tuned!

American Revolution Road Trip: Smithsonian National Zoo

The older kid has been wanting to go visit Smithsonian's National Zoo since we were planning our last trip to Washington, D.C., years ago, so I was thrilled that we could finally take her!

And nope, we didn't let the all-day rain stop us!

While we did see every single animal who lives in the National Zoo, the highlight for me (the kids saw some at the San Diego Zoo) was the pandas!!!!!!!

One panda was hanging out in the rain...

...but all the other pandas were staying comfy and warm inside.

Comfy, indeed!

See? Proof that I am both on this trip, AND saw a panda!

 

The younger kid's camera battery died halfway through, so we shared my camera for the rest of our visit:

Will really wants peafowl, and I even know where to buy the chicks, but they're 50 freakin' bucks unsexed, so I've told her that she has to spend her own money if she wants one.

 All of the exotic birds on display, and the younger kid was the most fascinated with these...

We stayed so late at the zoo that all of the gift shops were even closed by the time we walked out, meaning that I could not buy myself a stuffed panda souvenir. Yay for saving money, although I really want a stuffed panda souvenir!

Would I settle for a stuffed George Washington instead? Stay tuned and find out!