…title being Finney’s rendition of ‘whee’ and ‘Yahoo!’…

This describes much of today. I was out in the barn sanding and gluing away on the dining room table I’m making and Carrie took the kids out for a bike ride in the Chariot. When they came back they had a quick lunch and while I got them ready to go to a matinee (Over The Hedge), Carrie transplanted a tree-like thing to near our deck.

The kids and I bundled off to the movie and sat through 30 minutes (!!) of ads for other movies before the show began. As with other movies, Finney sat on my lap and chomped popcorn like there was no tomorrow. Owen sat transfixed on the edge of his seat. Well, perhaps transfixed is true but also tempered by the reality that if he sat back the seat folds up with him inside it. He’s a little too little yet. He eventually settled back against my arm while I managed Finney and grapes and popcorn and pear slices and juice through the show. Its was an OK movie, but still shelled out the usual flat platitudes that us jaded adults so take for granted. I won’t even relate them, as you already know what they are.

On the drive back home, we drove by the Bowmanville Zoo and there was an elephant in the parking lot greeting people. Owen exploded in the back seat and asked if we could stop. I was wary of being pulled into another attraction when we’d just come from one and thought that it would somehow lessen the experience of a movie, which we don’t do very often. Owen quietly said OK from the back in a small sort of way, and oh my I felt terrible. I suddenly flash-forwarded 30 years when he would say to me, ‘remember that time with the elephant and you didn’t stop?’. I knew then what we were going to do. We had on warm clothes because its always so darned cold in movie theatres and so we continued home and I ran around like a madman collecting shorts and snacks to hit the road back to the zoo. It was already 3:20 and I was pretty sure they closed at 5pm.

We swooped back on the zoo, and the elphant was still there! Finney and Owen got to drop treats into his curled-up trunk and pat his skin and hairs. It was like touching dinasaur skin! We went through the zoo and looked at all sorts of things, but avoided the 4pm ‘show’ because I just had this feeling that I didn’t want to see animals performing. I guess I figured the kids needed to see animals just doing their thing in their pens. One day perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to show them animals in the wild.

A baby goat tried to eat Finney’s dress, which caused her some distress (no pun intended!); Owen ran off and into an emu pen which caused Dada some distress and resulted in a short discussion regarding staying near him at all times; we ended up being the very last people to leave the zoo and they had to go and unlock the gate for us to get out and this caused Owen some distress because it meant we couldn’t stop in the zoo shop and buy anything which resulted in a somewhat relieved Dada after what had turned into a rather expensive day.

Here are some quick results of the trip to the zoo: