The Morning After...

I am totally exhausted. I swear, every year the Spooktacular gets bigger and longer than the year before! LOL Petunia's Banshee costume turned out great. Bear dressed as a bum with a paper bag bottle (water) and a sign that said 'Will Dance for $' around his neck. Bug was a "camouflaged man". I did the make up on all of them and am proud of it - they all were hits.

We got there early and only had a few minutes wait until the gates opened. It was crowded but not as bad as I thought it might be. The sun set quickly and all the carved pumpkins started to glow. They put orange plastic pumpkins over the light bulbs and all the gas flame torches in the Range of the Jaguar were lit. There were lots of bales of hay and people in pumpkin costume to lead the way through the Zoo.

As always, we had a fabulous time. I think it was even better this year. Instead of plastic bags to trick or treat with, they handed out reusable Winn-Dixie shopping bags - everyone I saw was very impressed by that.

There were candy "trick or treat" stations set up through out the zoo, along with 2 DJs (one in the Range of the Jaguar and the other in the Splash Park), but what we liked the best was the live music in the River Gardens, just like last year. This year was a man on drums and a woman on saxophone and they were great! They had the play area again, with inflatable slides, etc., but we decided that Petunia's costume wasn't a good play one and the boys were really too big to enjoy it.

One of the themes this year was "Pirate Cove" and they decorated the Florida exhibit like a pirate ship - complete with a mast and sail! It was very professionally done and we were very impressed. All the pirates hanging around were dressed in fantastic costumes and all were in character. One, with a squeezebox, made Bear dance so he wouldn't take his candy away. Another chased us when Petunia called him a 'scalawag'. LOL

By the time we were done, we were happily exhausted and full. Full, you ask? Yep, near the end of the walk, they were passing out treats to eat then and there - we all had a small cup of Rita's Frozen Custard/Ice, a Pepsi, two Krispy Kreme donuts and a 1/2 pint of TG Lee Chocolate Milk! ROFLOL The best prize of all - every family that left got a free copy of Maurice Sendak's first pop-up book called "Mommy?" that had a toddler crawling through a haunted house full of monsters looking for his mother. We had a blast looking at it when we got home.

We watched a few tv shows, I took a pain pill, and we were all in bed before 10:00 p.m. Unfortunately, Sharky ended up late for work this morning due to a huge snafu. Ooops.

I am totally zonked out. Uploaded all my pics and sent them to friends and relatives. Called C and thanked her for the tickets and then my Mom and updated her on all the going-ons. LOL