Getting sick over New Year’s is apparently now a tradition. I’ve had a cold (and colds make me act like a man…poor little bunny!) since Tuesday. So I’ve been drinking orange juice and catching up on “How I Met Your Mother” on streaming video even more quickly than my retired mother (not that it’s a race or anything). Hopefully I’ll feel better and will be back to my non-regularly scheduled posting soon.

Dave’s last day off was Tuesday and even though I was already feeling a little off and the wind chill was 17 degrees, our plan to visit the red panda babies at the National Zoo was too important to blow off. In retrospect, standing outside cooing over the red panda family (Mom, Dad and the two babies, Pili and Damini) for 30 to 45 minutes in the bitter cold was probably a bad idea. But look!

Red panda’s too sexy for this branch.

The pandas were all basically napping when we first arrived, but then the keeper came out with food. They seemed to listen to him, check it out–so adorable! Dude has my dream job.

It kind of looked like they were eating cut up hot dogs.

The keeper and the volunteer we talked to said that Dad is still not used to sharing his enclosure with the two babies. Here’s a baby adorably trying to hold his/her ground when Dad approaches. Dad had the right of way.

Baby red panda!

The babies were born in June. Next time we need to get to the zoo sooner. They were still adorable, but getting pretty big. Even the keeper said he had trouble telling the members of the family apart.

This is my first attempt at watermarking my photos. I kind of hate it. It’s a pain in the ass and I don’t like the way it looks. I’m also baffled as to why it looks different depending on photo orientation. But I’d hate having one of my pictures stolen too. Ironically, I’m pretty sure Dave took most of these since I prefer to focus on enjoying red pandas without a camera in front of my eyes. I took some photos, but it’s impossible to know for sure which, if any, of these I snapped.