Dribs and Drabs

Alex is sick, I am sick, the Noodle is sick. It is very gray and very cold outside. Bleargh. Our apartment is awash in Kleenex and yuck. Seems like a great time to update the old blog with some pictures from the last month or so, in which we went to the zoo twice and enjoyed a wonderful visit from my mom, aka Grandma aka Nana. 

Brace yourself for a ton of photos, because I don't have the brains to write today. 

Our first zoo trip, about a month ago, was with a group our friend Antonia, her siblings, their respective partners, and all their babies. It was madness, and lots of fun. Our second zoo trip, last week, resulted in far fewer photos because we were already totally jaded by wild caged animals. We were with Alex's brother and his wife, plus their fabulous daughter Charlotte, who gave the Noodle this awesome stuffed pink llama. Because I am awesome, I don't have photos of any of these things. However, I have a picture of this lemur: 

By our second zoo trip, we were jaded as this lemur. 

Here is a young elephant. 

Our only real photo of Noodle during Visit #2: Speaking with a distant cousin. 

The rest of these photos are from our first visit. Here we see a young Mr. O on a giant salamander,
in front of the salamander climbing wall. Obviously.

Noodle and Sir E. We took about 475 photos at this juncture. Amazingly,
this is the best one. Sad indictment of my photo skills/ toddlers' ability to stay still
and smile in the same direction at the same time. 

Mr. O and his mama. 

A rhino. In case you were unsure. This was just one of the many animals
that Miss Noodle did not give a flying f*** about. 

Not pictured: Multiple adults behind the camera, begging their kids
to look this direction. 

A dopey looking pelican. So cute! (This IS a pelican, right?)

Mr. E and his daddy and mommy, inspecting the most interesting
animal at the zoo...the foliage. 

Miss Noodle and Alex near the elephant enclosure. 

It is us!

Noodle inside the ibis enclosure. So much excitement!

A week later, my own Mommy came to town. With a suitcase of presents and two hands for playing with her granddaughter. She is probably the Noodle's favourite person ever. I'm trying to think of a clever analogy to demonstrate how well they fit together, but I'm not really in top mental form right now. They fit together like, like...they fit each together like a thing and its analogy, for example.

...Yeah, that'll have to do.

Anyway. Behold! A smattering of photos with Grandma.

Grandma, Alex and a grumpy, hungry Noodle at the Bienenfest (Bee Festival). 

The weather was properly Byronic.

Noodle riding a wooden snail.

And crossing a mini suspension bridge...

We were am Himmel, a beautiful (more so when the sun shines) hilltop
featuring a restaurant, tree circle, vineyards and this epic playground. 

Okay, apparently I can't find any more photos from Grandma's visit. Hmm. But here is Noodle. 

Right. Sadly, this is all the energy I can muster at this time. Do you know how tired we are? We are so tired that we fed our 14 month old daughter chicken nuggets from McDonalds because I can't be bothered to cook two warm meals today. (Alex seems to think this is fine. I think we should never tell anyone it happened...oops). And the television has been on literally all day. And as I type this the Noodle is unwinding a whole roll of paper towels and we are pretending not to notice. And we do not care. That is how zippy and dynamic we are over here, friends.

Have a lovely Sunday!

*COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH SNIFFLE*