One of our favorite family traditions is going to The Oregon Zoo to see the ZooLights. About half the displays are ones I remember from when I was a kid, like the zoo sign, the snake, and the giraffe putting the heart on the tree. Over the years, they have added more displays. Some are by the exhibits of the animals they feature, like the insects, snake, and penguins. Some portray stories: Humpty Dumpty, Alice in Wonderland, the Gingerbread Man, etc. It's fun to guess what some of them are and to hear other people's comments about them, too. We always try to take the train, which they decorate as well. The name of the zoo train "railway" is the Washington Park & Zoo Railway. Washington Park Zoo was the old name of the zoo, but they kept it for the trains. Along the train route, there was a "cave" with the abominable snowman from the Rudolph Christmas specials. For some reason, he liked me and kept blowing kisses at me when we went past on the train, then again when we walked past him on the other side of the train tracks a while later. The bats were very active; we got to see one peel a banana and eat the fruit while hanging upside down looking like a dried banana peel! The mountain goats thought everything was interesting, too. None of the other animals were awake, at least not that we saw, but we didn't get to see everything because the zoo is huge! The concert grounds and many of the other displays were ones that moved, so the alligator opened and shut its mouth, the gazelle went from standing to leaning against the tree to eat the leaves, the frogs hopped over the archway, and the monkey swung from the trees. We couldn't get a good picture of the monkey, so Jarek decided he would be the monkey and we could take a picture of him! He also ran up to the butterfly, quickly turned around, threw out his arms to match the wings, and shouted, "I'm a beautiful butterfly!" His favorite book when he was really little was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so he was nearly quoting the last phrase of the book, which was his favorite part.
I made this layout to match the previous one in my gallery, which I did for another challenge. I used a template by Bernice (bkasko) from last month’s pocket scrapping challenge, a paper from “Moonlit” by Connie Prince, a paper from “Oh Deer” by Scraps N Pieces, a paper from “Zoofari” by Kristmess, a cluster from “Ginger Bread House” by Scraps N Pieces, and word art from “Silly Monkey” by BoomersGirl Designs.
