just monkeyin' around

with just a few precious days left of summer vacation, we decided to cram in as much fun as we could possibly handle.  amazingly, we were able to coordinate schedules with my friend mommybelle and her brood, and with the temperatures at home expected to hover somewhere between "blisteringly hot" and "surface of the damn sun," we were happy to head down to the OC and meet them here:

it's so funny to see how much bigger LFM is than the bean, considering the fact that he's only two months older than she is.

she took advantage of every photo op that came her way.  i just can't imagine where she may have learned that.

i'd read yelp reviews about this place and mommybelle had given me a basic overview from her previous visits.  so i was prepared for the, uh...um...level of interesting stuff to see.  we did see a handful of animals, though.

lots of monkeys.  this place supposedly houses like 50 of 'em, although i don't think we saw nearly that many.

oh - maybe if you count these two.

looking at this little guy made me a little sad.  he just didn't look particularly thrilled to be there.

i was pretty mesmerized by this girl's hair.

and i thought this was cool.

with a little help from her sister, the bean managed to find a water fountain that served more than one purpose as she sweated it out.  these pictures never fail to make me cackle like crazy.

"cheapest souvenir in the world!" - mommybelle

they formed a conga line on the way back to the car.  it may have been the most fun the teen'd had all day.

hugs are the best.

and because we had just enough room for a little more fun - not to mention, a way better option than sitting in rush-hour traffic all the way home - we headed just a few miles away to our happy place.

after a snack and some coffee to wake my ass up, we decided to take advantage of a few places we don't typically hit up - like the surprisingly high-quality theater production of "aladdin" and the animation academy.  this is where, every 15 minutes, a disney artist comes in and teaches a class of parkgoers how to draw various characters.  the instructions are step-by-step and pretty easy to follow, and at the end of the first session we had these:

we hung out long enough to do one more:

and then we called it a day.  predictably, before we even got onto the freeway i peeked behind me and found this:

that right there is the sign of a very successful, very fun day.  strong work, yes?