You must be lost

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"There's got to be a morning aaaf-ter. . . "

Usually a combination of the two. I have a lull where it's hard to get the decorations packed up and put away and hard to get all the normal stuff back out. It's also hard to get back into regular routines and I don't know if it's kind of a mini depression or just that I've been in a weird sporadic routine for a week or two (or a month or two, whatever) when it's all over. Then, the seasonal depression usually hits after the holidays and gardening planning are over in about mid-January because I still have at least 6-8 more weeks of cold, grey, yucky days to get through before spring. I hate winter and Christmas gives me a good distraction, even though I don't really get excited about it.

But then, there's the relief that everyone is out of my house and I can sort of curl up on my own time and do the things I love instead of perpetually preparing for some gathering. I mean, I absolutely love to see everyone and in many cases it's the only time of year we get to see many of the people at the many gatherings we host or attend. But after about 6 weeks of that (pretty much non-stop from Thanksgiving to New Year's), I'm ready for some "on my terms" time and a little routine.

This morning we got up and went to the zoo pretty much right after breakfast to do their Eggstravaganzoo thing. Jonah won a token to ride the carousel for picking up so many eggs (0-40 eggs gets a goody bag, 41+ eggs gets a goody bag and a token for the carousel). The actual egg hunt gather was kind of lame, but it was over quickly and the stuff going on in the rest of the zoo was kind of neat. They did things like spray a couple of paper mache eggs with a meat scent and toss them in with the tiger cubs. It was fun to watch them rip them to shreds and bat them back and forth between them. Apparently the adult tigers and cougars would have actual meat in theirs later in the day. Most of the animals seemed to get some sort of treat in that manner, so a lot of them were more active than usual. Even the poison arrow frogs had a little plastic egg with what looked like little mealy worms of some sort in it.

After that, we went and had some lunch at La Hacienda. Mmmm. . . ceviche!

Then we headed back to the house to get Jonah cleaned up after his encounter with a lolly pop and get him up to the pool area for the neighborhood egg hunt, bunny hop contest and moon bounce. He did terribly at the bunny hop (they made them use pillowcases and he totally didn't get that concept and fell a lot). But during the egg hunt, he found the golden egg and won a big basket with candy and a stuffed bunny and such.

He's down for a nap now and I'm feeling an awful lot like I need one myself. Maybe I'll go run first though.

I'm trying to decide if we've had enough egg hunting this year or whether I should dye some eggs with him tonight and do a traditional hunt with him tomorrow. I'm kind of thinking we've done enough and he still won't know the difference yet this year. We'll see how I feel when I go to the grocery later, I guess.

Here are pics from today.