Katie Met Santa Today

Katie and I went to the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah today. We hung out for a couple of hours to check out everything. Our first stop was to visit with Santa and feed his reindeer. Katie was a little starstruck by Santa and wouldn't sit on his lap, but after quite a bit of coaxing, she was willing to stand in front of him long enough for a picture. He gave her a piece of chocolate afterward and she said she got to touch his glove when she took the candy from his hand. It was soft, she told me.

On our way out of Santa's house, we stopped to say hello and feed the reindeer. Katie threw small pieces of apple on the ground near them and they promptly gobbled them up. Rudolph wasn't there, but all the others were.

Next stop was to get Katie's face painted. She got cute Rudolph on one cheek and a beautiful snowflake on the other cheek.

Then we heard quite a noise over in the tiger cage, so we rushed over to see what was going on. We discovered that the two tigers in there together were playing rather roughly with each other. There was lots of growling, hissing, swatting, rolling and pouncing happening. It sure was fun to see such activity from zoo animals. That doesn't usually happen, in my experience anyway.

When we got home, Katie rode her scooter and played with the neighbor, Tyler, while I put up some Christmas lights on the bushes out front. Then for dinner, we headed over to Mel and Courtney's, after stopping off at Home Depot for more lights. Our yard looked dull compared to our neighbors, I thought. Anyway, we enjoyed the evening with Mel, Courtney, Stef, Jack and Avery. Mel whipped up a yummy breakfast for dinner consisting of pancakes, hash browns, bacon and a creamy orange fruit salad leftover from a batch Mel's Mom made recently. Good food and good company. Doesn't get much better than that. Thanks, guys.