Italian Festival and Wine for Wildlife

Happy Columbus Day! If you have the day off, good for you; if not, sorry. And for my Canadian friends and family, Happy Thanksgiving!

Living in Columbus, I feel like it should be a bigger holiday, but the great thing about Columbus Day Weekend in Columbus, OH is the Italian Festival, which happens to be in our neighborhood. It's not a big festival but it's full of delicious food, two music stages, rides for the kids and ... did I mention the food? We went both Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and we have friends who literally live inside the festival, so we hung out on their patio as well.

We signed up for the new car share program in Columbus. The program starts in a couple weeks and just might persuade us to become a one-car family. Check out our friends' gorgeous dog Chloe.

Saturday we were fortunate enough to attend a fundraiser at the Columbus Zoo called Wine for Wildlife. It was a beautiful night and a LOT of money was raised to support the zoo's conservation and sustainability work. We didn't win any of the auction items, but we did make a donation to the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Dinner was catered by Ruth's Chris Steak House (I'm still dreaming about the sweet potato casserole).

We got to see an Amur Leopard cub up close! Oh, and we drank a lot of wine.

With our friends Ron and Will (check out Aaron's monkey ears!).