It's all about who you know...

We spend Sunday nights with our Lifegroup from church. Our group consists of four families (which includes eight kids - Whew!). Tonight was Sean & Lisa's turn to host... and we are sooooooo thankful it was their turn because tonight just so happened to be the date of an MD Anderson Children's Hospital fundraising event at the zoo that Lisa helped to coordinate. And since life is all about who you know, and we just happened to know Lisa, our entire Lifegroup got into the event for free!!! Our sit down dinner was free! Our drinks (and wine) were free! The cotton candy was literally just sitting out on tables for you to pick up! And as if that weren't great enough, the zoo was closed to all guests - except those of us with yellow wristbands. It rocked! Okay, so the fact that everyone there (except our Lifegroup) had boocoos and boocoos of moola and their kids were dressed to the nines (Strasburg Children outfits, beautiful dresses, smocked brother/sister coordinating zoo outfits - literally. I am serious. Many of the rich kids' clothes matched their siblings', and many were smocked and then embroidered with zoo animals. Wow!) did make us feel a bit out of place, we decided to suck it up and enjoy the free evening.

There were zookeepers walking around the party with animals you could pet. (Yes, I see Grant needs a haircut.

I do promise that I combed his hair

and put hair GLUE in it - it's really obvious, huh?)

They had a beautiful brightly-colored decorated tent with

yummy food and AWESOME desserts!

As if I was going to pass this up! It's as big as my head!

Ask me if I even care how many calories it was...

It was sooooooooo verrrrrrrrrrrry worth it!

Grant and Ethan enjoying their free cotton candy.

Of course the zoo's carousel rides were free tonight, too.

Rhett didn't care about the free part. He was flat out pretty freaked out by the whole tall-animlas-moving-up-and-down-to-loud-muisc-thing. (Shocking, I know, since "Rhett" is synonymous with "Tough Guy".)

But Bruvher, Ethan, Mia and Avery were having a good time,

so Rhett decided to give it another go.

(Grant was waving at me.)

And he LOVED it!

So did I!

Rhett loved it so much, we had to take turns riding it with him.

We finally got him off the carousel and got to see a few animals in

the children's area before it got dark.

You'll just have to trust me that this is the owl cage

since I took a picture of their dinner (dead rats) instead of them.

The owls were really very pretty though, but their dinner was really pretty funny!

We got to pet and brush the goats. I think Rhett brushed every. single. goat. Surely the Houston Zoo has the most handsome goats tonight thanks to him.

City boys Grant and Ethan quickly learned that when a goat raises its tail, it's about to poop... They got a real kick out of it! Boys will be boys - especially when goats will be, well..........goats.

This is Keeley. She was in a bad mood tonight. She yelled at everyone. But then again, if I were a stinky, ugly goat with an overbite that lived in a petting zoo, I'd probably yell at everyone, too. This is the one goat that Rhett chose to stay away from.

The boys got to fulfill their lifelong dreams of being prairie dogs.

Ethan, Grant and Rhett enjoyed being some of the few

lucky Houstonian kids running and screaming through the echoing bat caves. I did not enjoy being one of the few Houstonian parents that lost my hearing because of it.

Icing on the cake = there was a beautiful full moon shining down on us.

And the weather... Oh! the weather!! It was perfect. Now, for a Houstonian to say that, you know it's a big deal. There was low humidity. The temp was in the low 70's. There was a light breeze and lots of sunshine (before the gorgeous moon came out). In case you still don't understand how rare of a beautiful day it was here in Oven Land, here's one more hint = It was actually a good hair day! (except for Grant - ha ha)

This is the outside of the zoo when we left. Notice there is NOT a crowd! Rare sight!

Gee, it's fun knowing the "right" people.

The animals were getting tired and were literally starting to go to sleep for the night, so we decided to go home to our beds, too. Grant was too sleepy to walk back to the car (so he said), so he hitched a ride on Daddy's shoulders.

What a fun evening! I think I can speak for the whole group when I say all sixteen of us had a BLAST! What a great way to end the weekend. Gee whilikers, I can't wait until Sean and Lisa host again. Ha! Tonight's going to be pretty hard to beat.