Over the weekend, we attended the National Zoo’s Boo at the Zoo event. This event is held only one weekend each October, and features “more than 40 trick-or-treat stations, animal demonstrations, and spooky, decorated trails.” Mike, Caroline, and I dressed up in our finest Star Wars costumes and added a few warm coats, because fall had come to stick around. We arrived at the zoo right before sunset and just before they opened the doors, letting the thousands of excited trick-or-treaters take the zoo by storm.

Here is our Mini Princess Leia, fueling up as she waits to enter the zoo. Check out the boots…she selected those herself.

BB-8 and Princess Leia selfie!

As soon as we got into the zoo, we headed straight for the Small Mammals House. This is Caroline’s favorite spot due to the fact that all of the animal exhibits are right at her eye level and most of the small mammals are busy and frisky. Here she is mesmerized by the Fennec fox, who ran back and forth in front of the glass.

And here she is by the red-ruffed lemur. She laughed and squealed, watching his antics.

Most of the exhibits featured something Halloween-y…pumpkins, ghosts, witches, spider webs…and Caroline loved pointing them out–especially the pumpkins, which she called “boppies.”

The Zoo did a great job with the decor!

The other two highlights for Caroline were the new Me & the Bee Playground and the Kids Farm. She really wanted a cotton candy florescent light up stick, but the line was insane, so maybe next year. The bee playground seemed super lame to Mike and me, but Caroline ran, jumped from honeycomb to honeycomb, laughed, slid on the one slide there, and jumped on the bouncy ground for 30 minutes straight. Shows what we know! We headed over to the petting zoo area, where the miniature donkeys strolled over and licked her hand. She loved it and stood by their stalls, just watching them, mesmerized. That is, until another kid tried to come over and say hi to the donkey. At that point, Caroline waved her hands wildly and yelled, “No, no, NO!” She was not interested in sharing her new friend with anyone else.

We have our work cut out for us with this one, I tell you that!

Thanks for having us, National Zoo! We will be back again next year for sure.