Big as Life and Twice as Scary

The weather was nice - gorgeous blue skies, slight breeze, warm sun, perfect, perfect day.  So rather than stay inside we loaded up on bikes and headed to the zoo.  Sounds nice, right?

While we were trying to leave the dog jumped up on the fence (a big no-no but nothing we have tried has got him to stop) and knocked another slat out.  This made it almost possible for him to squeeze out.  I panicked.  When he runs away he runs away fast and the only reliable way to get him is to bribe him with a van ride and the van currently has a dead battery thanks to the babies making it their play house.  So I made a grab for him and he completely bulldozed Grace trying to get away.  I managed to corner and put him in the house but was left with a traumatized four year old.  After trying and failing to calm her down I ran back into the house to grab helmets only to find myself locked out of the house by Libby.  I may have become a bit irritable at this point but we were going to the @!#$ zoo if it killed us.

I grabbed the helmets and threw them on the little ones' heads who had already loaded themselves on my bike while I was retrieving their helmets.  I knew I should have unloaded them before I backed it out of the shed door but I was just so frustrated I backed out with a fully loaded bike.  Half way down the bike slipped, the seat hit my inner thigh and my outer thigh crashed against the shed door.  My bike was wedged on the diagonal and the little ones were crying and screaming.  They were a little bumped around but mainly just terrified. I was wedged between the door frame and my bike so Ethan and Libby had to come lift them out of my bike so I could free myself.  Libby was crying at this point that she didn't want to go to the zoo because she didn't want to stress me out anymore.  It was a sad, frustrating, infuriating start to the trip.  I really thought about just throwing my hands in the air, going inside, reading a book, and letting the kids watch shows until their brains drained out of their ears.  But it was such a gorgeous day.  Sigh.  Stupid pretty day.

Once we got to the zoo things got better.  The monkeys were all out swinging around and not even being amorous (a rarity).  The kids were happy.  They each had enough money to ride the carousel.  The ducks and geese were waddling around with fluffy babies in tow.  We also kept hearing weird loud roaring noises.  We had no idea where they were possibly coming from.  Libby was afraid it might be the lions and made it clear we did not need to visit them if they were feeling that out of sorts, but we found the lions lounging around soaking up the sun.   After admiring them we went on a quest to find the source of the noise.  As we crept around the corner where the wallabies live we came face to face with a full sized, roaring, moving DINOSAUR.  Now I don't know if you have been to the Boise Zoo but we go there a lot and have never, ever seen a dinosaur.  We were shocked and amazed. The bigger kids were fascinated.  Sam immediately broke into hysterical cries. "I am ready to go home.  I am ready to go home right now.  I am ready to go home.  Let's go home."  I made a valiant attempt to hide my laughter from him.  I wish I had a picture but somebody who will remain nameless (head hung in shame) broke the camera.  Walking around another corner we discovered another dinosaur.  It was at this point Sam asked if we could just go look at the jelly fish.

I called Michael at work to tell him we had discovered two breathing moving dinosaurs at the zoo!  He did a little research and discovered our zoo is hosting eight dinosaurs for the summer.  The three older kids are in love.  Their love became all encompassing when we rounded another corner and found the life size T-Rex.  The zoo is awesome!  Unless you are Sam.  No amount of therapy is going to help him recover.  He would just really like to watch the jellyfish.