larger view

I spent Sunday lazing around most of the day.  We all did. My normally raucous children were quietly watching (here, I shudder) Spongebob or playing the Wii by barely flicking  their remotes vaguely toward the T.V.  while lounging on the couch.  My husband had succumbed to a rare afternoon snooze, complete with snoring in the rocker, and the baby, was (gasp) playing in his room with his toys. This was definitely not my family’s normal weekend pace which is often punctuated with bouts of insanity while racing from one event to the next in a desperate attempt to enjoy the last vestiges of summer.  Then it dawned on me… ZOOFARI… we were all suffering from an ice cream hangover.   

When I think about the day before, I remember arriving at the zoo with a box of wet wipes (for the children’s faces) and all my appropriate faculties in place, and sometime after the umpteenth ice cream cone, things started fuzzing out.

 Ahh, the wonderful event we anticipate with relish each year…There was the perfect August afternoon, the animals, of course, and all my long lost friends I haven’t seen since Zoofari last year, the great band, and the myriads of children, all sporting their favorite flavor of ice cream from ear to ear.  What’s not to love!  And then there was the ice cream itself.  Gallons and gallons of cold, creamy ice cream.  This is the one day of the year, where my family abandons all sensibility and we eat as much ice cream as we can all possibly hold.  How much did I actually eat?  I think back, again, my head swims, umm let me think… there was the raspberry sorbet, the peanut butter with minature peanut butter cups, the rocky road, the sundae, the blueberry cheesecake, the maple nut, the almond something… I groan as I plop into the nearest chair. 

Slowly through the long Sunday afternoon my family regains their senses and by dinnertime, the children were once again their rowdy selves.  I love Zoofari, but thank goodness it only comes once a year.