{"id":520,"date":"2008-01-01T17:54:02","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T22:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=520"},"modified":"2008-01-01T17:54:02","modified_gmt":"2008-01-01T22:54:02","slug":"Busy, fun day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=520","title":{"rendered":"Busy, fun day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We started out the day by taking Josiah sledding for the first time ever. He had a good time, but he was more interested in walking around in the snow like a little penguin than he was in being pulled in the sled. Analise, on the other hand, enjoyed having me run down the hill in front of her pulling her down as fast as I could go. After sledding, I changed into my bike gear and set out on a 75 mile bike ride to Duluth, MN. The plan was for Kristine to drive everyone else in the car and pick me up alongside the road however far I made it. I didn&#8217;t make it very far in the cold, snowy weather heading into a stiff wind. Nevertheless, we made it to Duluth to attend the &quot;Zoo Year&#8217;s Eve Party&quot; at the Lake Superior Zoo. Experiencing an outdoor zoo with 20+ inches of snow on the ground was awesome! Finally, we met Kat for dinner at Bulldog Pizza.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"getting ready for a busy day in the cold\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy04.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Here&#8217;s Josiah all ready for a busy day in the snow!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"first time sledding\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy16.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Josiah&#8217;s first sledding experience was good, but he didn&#8217;t like being tied down into the sled.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Analise and me sledding\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy01.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Analise didn&#8217;t want to miss the sledding action. Here I am sporting my new Christmas sweatshirt.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"artistic Josiah\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy03.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Josiah liked walking in the snow. Here is a closeup of Josiah that was a little<br \/>blurry, but I touched it up with the &quot;paint daubs&quot; filter in Adobe Photoshop.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"playful polar bear\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy05.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>This playful polar bear was a popular animal to see. He was actually kind of far away, <br \/>but this picture was taken with the full 12x optical zoom on our camera.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"cuddly grizzly bear\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy06.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>This HUGE grizzly bear looked friendly, but I wouldn&#8217;t want to get in the cage with him!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"sleds not strollers\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy07.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Sleds were the preferred means of transportation for young kids.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"up close with a huge deer\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy08.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>We were able to get very close to some of the animals. Here Josiah was able to pet this HUGE deer.<br \/>It wasn&#8217;t very tall, but it must have weighed half a ton because it was long and wide.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"prowling cougars\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy09.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>These cougars were prowling around their exhibit. One of them climbed <br \/>on top of a rock and let out a very large meow &#8212; it sounded just like a house cat!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"sleepy tiger\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy10.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>This sleepy tiger hardly moved at all, but he did blink once or twice.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"snowy owl\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy11.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>This snowy owl was hard to see sitting in the snow &#8212; but it was one of the coolest animals to see.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"hay ride\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy12.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Hay rides at the zoo.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"sledding at the zoo\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy13.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Another popular thing to do was sled on the big sledding hill. Analise wasn&#8217;t quite big enough to go down this hill.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"beautiful scenery\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy14.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>The zoo was overall beautiful. In this distance is the Spirit Mountain downhill ski resort. The far rock cropping was the<br \/>cougar exhibit. The middle rock area was the polar bear exhibit. The near one I think was the seal exhibit.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"pretty sunset\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"\/family\/christmas07\/busy15.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Here&#8217;s the pretty sunset behind the Polar Bear exhibit.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We started out the day by taking Josiah sledding for the first time ever. He had a good time, but he was more interested in walking around in the snow like a little penguin than he was in being pulled in the sled. Analise, on the other hand, enjoyed having me run down the hill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-8o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}