Chris is kind of funny about New Year’s. He thinks it’s a totally ridiculous holiday and refuses to stay up until midnight, even though he often stays up that late on other nights. In years past, he has always insisted that the kids go to bed early as well. It’s true that they don’t sleep in really, no matter how late they stay up,thus making them sleep deprived and cranky. But it’s New Years! So I let them all stay up til midnight for the second year in a row. It was fun. We ate fun snack food that I normally never buy or make, played games, watched a movie and watched all the neighbors fireworks out of the window.
Apparently, we live in a prime firework lighting area. I say this because two different groups of people drove up in their cars, got out right in front of our house and started lighting off their fireworks in the street. Plus, our neighbors were lighting several themselves. So we had a really good show for several minutes. And then there was the firework that went astray.
One of the random people light a rocket that was not pointing straight up, but rather at quite an angle. It flew sideways, although still with enough altitude to clear the first house in it’s path, whew! However, it then began it’s descent and bounced off the roof of the other neighbor’s house while still lit and then fell into the garden where it rolled around a few times. Our neighbor, Heinz, who was out lighting fireworks, and his son, ran over to inspect the damage and make sure the fire was completely out. He just retired 2 years ago from the volunteer fire department in our little village, so if anyone would know what to do it would be him. 🙂 They cleaned up the mess and went back to lighting fireworks, but it definitely put a damper on the whole proceedings.
I saw them the next morning go over and do a more thorough inspection in the daylight. The house and garden belong to his mother after all. I wonder if those people will come back again next year?
We, well those of us who were up, went to the Zurich zoo the next morning. We didn’t see all the animals, as we only wanted to stay a couple hours. But we did spend a lot of time admiring the adorable baby gorillas.
Lots of other folks were doing the same thing. The moms are just so tender with them, and they resemble humans so closely. It is a beautiful thing to witness.
Next door there was also a baby orangutan. He was being very adventurous and climbing all over the ceiling of the enclosure.
We were all very nervous that he would lose his grip and fall. I mean, he is just a baby after all! Apparently his mom must have had the same thought because after a while, he got himself into a pickle where he couldn’t maneuver anymore and she climbed up to rescue him.
Once we knew he was safe, we felt better about moving on to another part of the zoo. And came upon the tiger just in time to watch him eating his breakfast. 
I know, the camera focused on the fence rather than the tiger, but I wanted to show how close he was and what a great view we had. He first licked all the “juice” off and then began to gnaw on the meat. Kind of interesting to see it live.
On our way out, I had to snap a pic of the penguins. It always cracks me up to see this giant “babies” trying to snuggle up to and get food out of their parents. Um, you’re as big as I am kid, get your own food! 🙂