Fun With Cousins (Part 3)

Addie(8), Ammon (10), Lizzie (6), Brielle (4), Karl(6), and Hannah(8)

We left Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons house around 3pm. By now, both Josh and Caleb should have napped, but we decided to skip the naps for the day! Are we crazy or what? These ARE two year olds, you know! Of course, they both fell asleep on the way to the zoo. Josh, fortunately, had a stroller that he could lay down in, so he stayed asleep for a short period. Caleb has to share a double stroller with his baby sister, Bekah, so he isn't able to lay down. He typically is pretty good about missing his nap, so he did fine. About half way through the zoo, Josh woke up and decided he was not happy about missing his bed. He screamed and cried and laid down on the ground at the zoo just hollering to all who could hear. Nana stood patiently by him as the other kids ran from one exhibit to the next. Finally, as we were passing by him, I said, "Bye, Joshy. I sure wish you would come see the animals with us." This seemed to perk his interest. I guess he hadn't realized we were actually looking at cool stuff until that point. He jumped up and was off running again. Cute guy!

Addie (8), Karl (6), and Caleb (2) check out the white alligator

There IS an elephant back there somewhere! Do these kids weigh as much as an elephant?

Emma(4) stuck close by Grandpa in case anything scary happened!

The bears were wrestling just like the kids!

The baby giraffe was one of the highlights of the zoo...here she is feeding from her mother!

We finished by taking a train ride around the zoo. Great times were had by all. We then packed the kids up in the two cars and headed off to Red Robin for some dinner. Red Robin is ALMOST as fun as Grandma Gibbons house. The kids were thrilled to eat at their favorite place, and Nana and I were thrilled that we didn't have to fix dinner. The bigger kids did great at Red Robin, and even busy Josh seemed to have gotten most of his wiggles out by then (plus he was very distracted eating two bowls of Mac-N-Cheese).

Unfortunately for me, my two little ones decided to make me crazy. Bekah pooped all out of her clothes, so I used the Red Robin bathroom to change her (can I just say that trying to figure out how to wash your hands while you're holding a baby in a public restroom isn't fun?). I then changed Caleb and he had wet out of his diaper as well. Sigh. As the prepared mom that I am, I had no extra clothes for him, so he had to stay in his wet ones (hey...I DID have extras for Bekah...that's got to count for something, right?) As soon as I returned to the table, a bunch of the girls had to go potty. I helped them and took them back to the table. I then needed to go make Bekah a bottle so I made another trip to the restroom. They only had cold water in the bathroom, and Bekah is extremely fussy about having nice warm bottles, but I was desperate.

After wrestling Caleb off of the chair he was climbing on (he had decided to NOT eat dinner and climb all over the restaurant instead...I'm guessing this is because he ate 8 chicken nuggets, a hamburger, AND fries at McDonalds for lunch), I sat down to feed Bekars her bottle. Emma decided this was a good time to announce that she was going to throw up. Sigh. So I dropped Bekah in the arms of the closest adult and hurried Emma to the toilet (good thing I was QUITE familiar with the way there by now). Emma did NOT throw up (thank goodness). By the time I got back and Emma was feeling okay, ice cream sundaes had come (I had eaten just a portion of my dinner). Caleb did want ice cream, of course, so I worked on feeding him bites while I tried to convince Bekah that two ounces of bottle really wasn't enough. She was offended that I had given her a cold bottle, however, and wouldn't eat another sip. Caleb was now messy and climbing on things again. I gulped down a couple of bites of ice cream and took the kids to the car. It's a good thing that Nana and Grandpa could handle my older kids, because I don't know what I would have done.

We were out of gas, so Grandpa and I stopped to put gas in the car. Bekah was screaming her displeasure at us by this point (and continued to scream for quite some time), and Lizzie decided that the two trips to the bathroom at Red Robin were not enough and needed to go again. Don't you love gas station bathrooms? All in all, I was very happy to get home to my sweet husband. I pretty much collapsed into bed in exhaustion and he helped take care of everything. We were home by about 8:15. What a long, fun day!!!