Monkeys for Apples

Well, we started out this morning on a fall mission to pick apples. I found one of those U-Pick places on the internet and we were all excited. When we pulled up to the "orchard" (I use that term loosely) we quickly realized our adventure was not what I thought it was going to be. A fruit stand owner informed us that we could just wander around the "orchard" (aka weed and dying tree jungle) and fill our bucket for $5. The apples were tiny and brown and the whole scene was a little scary.

We were extremely disappointed to waste one of Dave's precious days off, so we found a little zoo right next door and changed our plans. Now, Dave and I are zoo-snobs. We grew up going to 2 of the BEST in Chicago, so this tiny zoo (that pretty much just featured 17 different breeds of monkeys) was nothing amazing to us. What we did find amazing, though, was the joy that it brought to Ella. She had a huge smile on her face all day and would say observant things like, "These birdies are funny, they're laughing!" (they were really screeching), or "That monkey has hands!" or "The seals are cuddling." or "This birdie playing peek-a-boo!" (he was crawling in and out of his box). Having turned our sour apples into zoo apple juice, all-in-all it was a fun family day.