It may be winter, but the Seneca Park Zoo is open year-round. So it invited the public to help celebrate the New Year Tuesday afternoon.

“The winter’s actually the best time to come to the zoo," Assistant Zoo Director Dr. Louis DiVincenti said. "The animals are really active, the park is beautiful.”

Zoo officials celebrated by dropping their own version of a ball and other toys into the lion habitat, along with other New Year’s Eve related activities.

They just did things a little earlier, inviting the public to help usher in 2020 with a Happy Noon Year event, drawing in scores of families hoping for an early bedtime.

“I’m not even sure the parents will be up at midnight," Julie Henrichs said. "[My child] was at her grandparents’ last year, and she’s mentioned six or seven times already she wants to stay up until midnight, but I don’t if we’ll make it.”

But the event didn’t just bring families together. It brought friends together too.

“I like it because I met my friend here,” Lucy Staba said.

Staba and Lila Henrichs are both 6 years old and classmates at Cobbles Elementary School in Penfield.

“They’re very much alike. They’re both strong-willed, smart, brave little girls," Lucy's mother Mindy Staba said. "They speak their minds. They do, so they gravitated towards each other.”

For the girls, running into each other at the celebration was a happy surprise.

“We were walking up the hill, and of course the kids spotted her and her kids, and they get really excited to see each other,” Staba said.

Sure, parting was tough. But they’ll see each other next year.