Rosh Hashanah Road Trip

Last night we began celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, by eating some apples and honey. Mom tried to get me to smile for a photo, but instead I cracked her up with a series of hilarious funny faces. Then I tested out my new rain boots by going outside with Mom to play in a downpour, thanks to Hurricane Hermine. Here's to a sweet new year (and splashing in mud puddles)!

Today we celebrated the holiday in a less traditional way. Hazel and I are too young to sit through services at our synagogue and didn't want to go to babysitting, so we made it meaningful by packing it up and making it a nice family day. Our first family road trip!

We drove in the car for about an hour, then stopped at a place off I-35 called the Snake Farm. It was great. Hazel's been making lots of cool snake noises lately because we have lots of books with snakes in them, and today we got to see real, live snakes. We saw lots of other cool things too, like tarantulas, turtles, scorpions, a zebra, longhorn cattle, tons of chickens, a turkey, alligators, lemurs, a hyena and some hilarious monkeys.

The last thing we looked at while at the Snake Farm were some goats and a llama, which were in a section called the petting zoo. Hazel was terrified of them, so she and Mom watched from afar, but Dad had a bag of animal feed he gave them, while I jumped up and down, flapped my arms, and screamed, "Goats! Goats!" in an excited, high pitched voice. It was fantastic. It was especially  funny when the llama pushed the other animals aside and took the whole bag from Dad's hand. Throughout the rest of the day I randomly yelled, "Goats!" and laughed.

Next we went to Dad's favorite restaurant, Krystal's. Usually we aren't allowed to eat fast food, with the rare Chik-Fil-A exception when our grandparents come to town. Today though, we had cheeseburgers and french fries. Hazel and I weren't crazy about the burgers but liked the fries.  Dad liked it all.

Our next stop was San Antonio's Witte Museum. We saw a few cool things at the entrance to an exhibit about dinosaurs, which closed a few days ago, and lots more animals like a jackrabbit, some buffalo, coyote and skunks, that were part of an exhibit about Texas wildlife. Our favorite part was the HEB Science Treehouse. They had a computer for kids my age with a fun ABC game, so I spent a lot of time playing that while Hazel walked around, played with Duplos, read books and played on a board that played music and lit up when you walked on it. They also had a touch tank set up to show you what the bottom of a river looks like, which I really liked.  I splashed and played in the water.  Mom was glad she brought a change of clothes for me; she's always very prepared.

It was late in the day by the time we wrapped it up at the museum, so we headed home. Hazel and I napped in the car and we had a great dinner at Chuy's. Mom and Dad were a little nervous about how we'd do with all that time in the car and such a long day, but we were all pleasantly surprised with how well it went.It was a really great Rosh Hashanah.

Make sure you check out our great photos from our road trip, which includes pictures from Hazel's first trip to the playground (she LOVED playing in the mulch), where Dad and I wore matching University of Kentucky shirts (and I enjoyed looking at two Mitch's in Dad's sunglasses).