Courtenay’s family is all on Oahu for Christmas. It’s exciting! Sunday I met Courtenay’s mom, Sally, for the first time, then Monday she took us to the Honolulu Zoo. Sally’s best friend from 1st grade, who she didn’t see for almost half a century before reuniting 5 years ago, works at the zoo and was able to give us the super special awesome tour, which involved feeding the elephants and getting to pet their trunks!! It was SO cool!
The Honolulu Zoo was amazing, and I can’t believe that it was my first time there after living within a mile of it for over a year. Wow! I saw tigers, and a rhinoceros, and giraffes and a toucan, and two turtles trying to mate (interestingly, this was the only thing Courtenay took a picture of during our visit), which is something hard to imagine until you see and hear it (groaning, loud shell cracking, and very slow hip 
thrusts) I say “trying†because we found out that Zoos can’t just let their animals breed whenever they want, there’s an organization that determines when and what animals need to breed based on where and how the new animals can be cared for. So they implant birth control into the animals.
Did I mention the orangutans? (I ask as I try to steer my writing away from from animal sex.) The male, Rusti, had super long dreadlocks and looked a lot like some Seattle kids I grew up with ;). Sally’s friend told us that Rusti can be “quite romantic†with his girlfriend and exhibition-mate, Violet, but fortunately we didn’t see that or I would feel obliged to add a picture of it.