Joyce's 22nd birthday - May 4th 2009

Hello everyone,

as promised, I am back again here. I will write some stuff about Monday, May 4th of this year, when Joyce turned 22. (And when Steph turned a few years older than that). You could have already known what we did that day, since I wrote two blog reports about FedCon 18 from the car on our way there and back again.

But we were still quite tired from our FedCon 18 weekend in Bonn, when we had to get up early again to be in Nijmegen (my parents' place) in time to get to where they were taking us. OK, George and I knew already, but we tried to keep it a surprise for Joyce.

Ever since she made quite a funny remark about something she'd remember from visiting the Emmen Zoo quite some years ago, my mum and I had the intention on taking her there for her birthday. Then, at my work, they had a special coupon deal. Save 20 coupons, pay 2,50 euro and get a ticket for any of the co-operating zoo's. So we saved together till we had 5 tickets and ordered our tickets on-line for May 4th. Mum and I also bought birthdaycards with monkeys on them, seeing when Joyce wanted to know why she could not plan anything to do on her birthday, my dad told her she was going to flea the monkey (it's a Dutch expression, "de aap vlooien").

Since, due to FedCon 18, I did not have time to wrap all Joyce's prezzies, I gave them in another way. Either way, that Monday morning, she got the stuff I bought for her. One present, she had gotten on May 1st already, seeing I thought she might want to read a bit when we were at the hotel in Bonn. I had gotten her a copy of "Death's Daughter", a novel by Amber Benson, signed and personalised to her (of course, I also ordered a copy for me as well *winks*). I was really hoping she would like it and she (of course, I can almost add) did! But that did leave me with some more presents to give on her real birthday. I had gotten her a PlayStation 3 game that she had talked about a lot: Devil may come. An ex-college had it and she wanted to have it so I got it for her quite some time ago. I really even had to persuade her once NOT to buy it (she was holding it, thinking about it) since we had FedCon 18 coming up and she needed to save her money. Luckily she "bought" my story and not the game... I also got her a game for the PlayStation Portable: Silverfall. She really liked the games I bought for myself, sometimes even more than the games I've gotten her, so I figured she would ike this game too. *which she does, since she's had the chance to play it since then*. I also got her a Parker ballpoint pen, seeing she borrowed mine ages ago and never got it back to me. It's one from the "Shrek" edition, with "Puss in Boots" on it. And I got her a CSI mug from Warner Brothers Movie World in Germany. I had also bought her a T-shirt there but she already got it from me since I was hoping she'd wear it. It was a Batman T-shirt from the last movie. I will make a picture of her wearing it one day to share it with you all here.

But she really loved the presents and after that, we'd had to get ready to leave for Nijmegen. When we got there, of course we'd had to wait for my dad to be ready. So typical! They say men always have to wait for the women, but in my experience, it's mostly the other way around.

So a little after 9am, we finally left and headed to the Emmen Zoo. Joyce and I were in the backseat, together with my mum. We used the time to write posts for our blogs, so we would not be ittitated by the way my dad was driving. I do believe I explained that already in the blog posts I wrote during the rides there and back again.

When we parked the car, we first went to the smaller (and newer) part of the Zoo. Click here to visit the part of the site where you can download the map of the whole zoo. On the way to the entrance, I made a picture of Joyce with a penguin.

Then we reached the entrance, we showed them our Super de Boer tickets and went inside. On this side, we came to the penguin habitat immediately. And boy, do they like to play with shadows on their wall...

Then we moved on through the park. Some parts were still being made/in progress.

And some parts were ready. Last time I had been in that zoo was with Swantje in December 2005 (which seems like ages ago at this moment). They really progressed since then. After that, we went to the older part of the zoo. We did need to walk for about 15 minutes through Emmen's city center and when we arrived, they scanned our vouchers and we were in once again. We followed the yellow Zoo Route, and started with the old stuff. The animals that lived a long time ago and the older types of animals that are still with us today, like the seaturtles and sharks.

They were still working on the turtle habitat, but we did make a picture of a shark swimming by. The wonderful thing about this zoo, is that it has over 17.000 square meters of habitats that were inside. So even on a rainy day, which luckily we did not have, you can enjoy a lot of beautiful sceneries.

From there on we went to the butterfly habitat. The butterflies were the reason we went to Emmen in the first place. Because they were part of Joyce's comment earlier this year.

And then, we went on again. I was kinda getting irritated with parents who did not keep an eye on their children and parents that thought no one needed to see anything besides their children. That was the bad thing about going on Joyce's birthday, it fell within a children/kids holiday season. But we did want to go on her real birthday, so that was something I needed to deal with...

Here some more animal pictures:

This little "fellow" George and I also saw in Kenya

Curious aren't they?

After seeing all these animals, we were getting quite hungry. I remembered where Swantje and I ate a few years ago and there we went.

And everyone seemed to enjoy it, so that was a good sign. And a delicious one *smile*.

From there we crossed the kiddies padding zoo, which was also very nice.

So cute, the little ones...

And on to the monkey business :)

And flamingo's were present as well.

Back to some more monkey business!

Then we went outside again and we surely noticed that spring had arrived indeed!

Then we say the hippo's before moving onto the larger Savannah area, where the giraffes, warthogs and rhino's were.

And from there on, we went to the tiger area. They were relaxing when the sun was out and about. It was a wonder it did not rain the whole day, seeing normally when my dad comes along, the rain follows us as well.

Then we saw some more animals on our yellow zoo route.

And then we finally were heading to my favorite animals in the park: the elephants!

At the end of the day, we all had a nice day together. Some of us were quite tired on the way back...

When we arrived in Nijmegen, George and Joyce took the dogs for a walk. I went to visit Eileen and give her the FedCon 18 signature of Nana Visitor and a cd-rom I created for her with some pictures and video's. On their way back with the doggies, George and Joyce picked up fries and all for dinner.

After we ate, I was quite tired. And seeing I would have to work all day on Tuesday, we headed home after dinner was over.

Chance and I in the back of the MUTS mobiel :) (Joyce's Car).

This is the end of my post about May 4th. Hope you all liked it. Now I have one less post to write :)