Memorial Day Weekend

We had a nice, relaxing Memorial Day weekend.  We threw around the idea of going to Omaha to the fabulous Henry Doorly Zoo, but we decided it would be too difficult with the time we had and the boys' napping and everything.  Instead we went to our own zoo, which is small, but just right for little kids.  It was Drew's first trip to a zoo since he was a little infant, and he really enjoyed it.  He loves animals, so we knew he would enjoy seeing everything at the zoo.

Here's one of the lionesses.  It was nice she was at least awake; so often they're just totally asleep during the day.

Drew and I liked the big cats a lot- the lions and tigers (and bears, oh my!) are my favorite.

Zach really wanted to see the sea lions.  We got to look down on them from a little balcony up above.

While we were watching the sea lions we could hear the gibbons doing their call, which is really funny.  Unfortunately, they quit before we got over there, so we went to see the tiger instead.

Next we headed to the African Boardwalk to check out the giraffes, who were right up by the boardwalk.

Then we continued around to see the zebras.

We then went by the flamingos, where Zach told me for about the 10th time in a week that flamingos are pink because the fish they eat are pink.  We tried to get a good picture of the boys, but it's tough to get Zach to just smile normally.

Then we went into the area where you can feed llamas and goats, and Zach tried his hand at milking a fake cow.  He looks like a natural, I think.

Here's Zach feeding a llama or an alpaca- I don't know which it is.  I don't know if there was a sign, either.  It kinda creeps me out to feed the animals, but Zach likes it, so I let him do it, even though I can't stop thinking about their gross tongues and germs on his hands.

Even Drew got in on the action, though this brought even more germy ideas to my mind, since he still occasionally puts his hands in his mouth.  Then I figured, we're at the zoo, and he's probably touched all kinds of germy stuff.  I just feel like I remember my parents warning me about not touching stuff at the zoo because of all the germs, so anytime I'm at a zoo, I can't get germs out of my mind.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

After feeding the animals Zach wanted to play on the big playground that's in that part of the zoo, so we did that for a bit.

At this point we'd been at the zoo for about an hour and a half or so, and Drew was starting to get sick of it.  I don't know if he was tired or hot or what, but he was starting to get really crabby.  So we went to get in line for the train, which Zach of course had been asking to do since we got there.  Well, Drew must be my child, because he seemed to hate standing in line.  He started to throw such a fit, and I could see all these people (two different ladies, really) looking at me while I tried to deal with this incredibly crabby baby.  If I held him, he was mad and would arch his back.  If I put him on the ground, he'd cry harder and just get more mad.  So I just endured it, thinking about how we had already paid for the train tickets and how much Zach would be upset if we didn't ride the train.  I was hopeful that getting on the train might change Drew's mood, and thankfully, once the conductor was finally back from his lunch break and we got going, it did.  But we knew then that we had to skip the fish and stuff inside and just get home.  Good thing we didn't drive all the way to Omaha just to spend 2 hours at the zoo.  That would have sucked.  

We got home and got the boys ready for their naps, and Drew didn't even want me to sing like he usually does.  I started singing and he started fussing and flailing about, so I just told him good night and put him in his crib, and he quit fussing and went right to sleep.  

The rest of the weekend was very low-key.  We got together with some friends on Sunday night, I made my practice cake for Zach's birthday, and Monday we just sort of hung out.  It was very nice.