Dream Night at the Zoo

Last year at this time I was in the hospital with Christopher and a volunteer came and handed me some tickets to go to the zoo for the annual Dream Night. It's a special event where they close the zoo to everyone except families with critically ill children. Since I had been in the hospital for a week, I needed to spend some time with the girls, so Matt took over for me and I took the girls to the zoo. It was just hours after I had been given the pager and the official letter to let us know that Christopher had been listed for a heart transplant, so I was emotional and shaking, and exhausted from sleeping in a chair. After spending three hours at the zoo, I took the girls home and put them to bed, then I had a bowl of ice cream and a can of Pringles for dinner.

This year was completely different. Since we are part of the Hope Kids organization, we got to go to the dream night again--this time as a whole family. It was so much fun! They had lots of people dressed up in costumes, and I think the kids would have been happy to have gone just for that!

 They were very excited to see Maleficent, but she scared Christopher, so we didn't get him in the picture.

 Superman! He is second only to Mickey Mouse for Christopher. When we walked away from him he got sad and asked to go see him the rest of the night.

 Off to see the giraffes--WAIT! IT'S ELSA AND ANNA!!!!! I swear, I thought Shannon was going to wet herself. Of course, there was a long line to get a picture with these two. As soon as we got in the line Chris started singing "Let it Go!" at the top of his lungs. I think this made their entire night. 

 They were also very excited to see Rapunzel and Belle.

 We finally got to see some animals! This is an Amur leopard, and he was pacing very quickly, so I didn't get a good picture of him. 

 This was at the end of the night and all three kids were still going strong! We rode the carousel, had dinner, went to the splash pad, saw the polar bear, sea lions, seals, the bird show, a monkey, a snow leopard, zebras, elephants, rhinos, and as we were walking out we heard the lion roaring, so we headed over there even though the park was closing. It was too dark for pictures, but he came right up to the window and pawed at the kids. They didn't even flinch! Then he roared several times again. It was amazing!

Thank you, Hope Kids, for another fantastic night!!!