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02/20/2004 Archived Entry: "animals, books and dates"

We went to the LA Zoo yesterday so Tabitha could look for animals that live in the plains areas of the world since that's our current area of interest in our animal unit study. We found the obvious (lions, zebras and giraffes) but were hoping to find out about others based on signage at the zoo. Turns out the signs were pitifully unhelpful. My geography is not the best, but even with Chris around, a sign that says "native to southeast South America" doesn't really tell us what kind of environment that is. I had given Tabitha the camera for the day and she had a blast taking tons of pictures. I'm going to print out her zebra ones at home since that is the animal she researched last week and let her scrapbook them for her animal portfolio.
Semi-strange occurance at the zebra exhibit. Tabitha and I were talking about some things she learned about zebras and a woman who I think was a teacher of some sort, thanked Chris and I for being parents who not only take our child to the zoo but also talk to her in a learning fahion. It was just odd because she didn't say "You are good parents" she said, "Thank you for being good parents." I've never been thanked for my parenting before. We, of course, thanked her for saying something so nice but she didn't want to hear that. Anyway, it sure put a smile on our faces :)
When we got home, there was a Scholastic package for Tabitha (which she said as "school-tastic" which gave Chris and I some lovely laughs). I had signed her up for a Disney book club and the intro package game with 8 books and a backpack. Boy did Tabitha love getting all those books! They are a bit different than I thought they would be but her enthusiasm for all of them and the fact that she say right down and read 2 or 3 of them, leads me to think I made a good decision ordering them for her :) I also put her in a Barbie book club and hope they get here soon.
Chris and I went out last night after dropping the kidlet with the in-laws. Unfortunately, it seemed that every single other person had the same idea. We couldn't even go to our first choice restaurant because it was a 50 minute wait and we had a movie to get to. Of course, we spent the next 50 minutes trying to figure out somewhere else to eat that wasn't crowded and probably should have just waited. Eventually we ended up at Olive Garden before heading to the movie. We saw "50 First Dates" which I loved! The ending totally made me cry and it was just a really sweet movie. Sure there were a couple of unnecessary gross parts (and a very gratuitous wet shirted Drew scene that made the hubby rather happy, lol) but the overall story was just wonderful. I had read a bad review of it last week and I'm so glad it was wrong. Especially considering how right the bad review was for "Along Came Polly" which we saw a couple weeks ago.