This Is Why We Have Rules

We had a family day today. You know, where you pack up the family with your water bottles and snacks and go somewhere for several hours at a time? I'm sure you've heard of them, or actually done them yourselves. We don't do family days very often. I mean, we sit around the house as a family doing nothing all the time, but packing up all of us and going somewhere doesn't happen that much lately. Believe it or not, it went pretty well.

We had a good time, but we didn't make the best choices. Actually, Charlie and I didn't make the best choices, we didn't let the kids make any of the decisions today. I like it that way. We decided to go to the zoo. We have two main rules about the zoo. One, don't go in the summer because it's way too hot. Two, don't go on the weekend because there are too many people there. As you can see, we broke both of those rules.

We though maybe if we got there early we could beat the heat. Not so much. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. at the thermometer on the car already said 91 degrees. That's right people who don't live in Texas, it's June 6 and it's already in the 90s by 10 a.m. One very good reason why it is no fun to live in Texas. Of course if you can survive the summers your memory kicks in during the winters and once again you remember why you live here. So, all the animals were hiding in the shade and lying down. None of them were romping and scampering about, just lots of hot, lazy animals.

We don't usually like to go to the zoo on the weekends, because that's when everybody goes, but our pool is a green lagoon filled with algae right now and until the pool guys are done fixing it our first choice for weekend entertainment is out of order. When we arrived there were tons of cars in the parking lot, but it turned out okay. It never felt cramped or crowded and we were able to see everything we wanted.

I wasn't sure what Amanda would get out of it, because I've tried taking little kids to the zoo before and it's kind of a waste. You point directly at the animal and they look somewhere off in space at something totally different. However, when I pulled Amanda, hot sweaty Amanda, out of the stroller and showed her the elephants, she got a huge grin on her face and let out a little laugh. So, at least she saw what I was showing her that time. She also liked looking at the scary, over sized carp in the little river and the parakeets in the bird sanctuary, but that may be all she saw the entire day.

Andy and Sarah seemed to have a good time. Sarah is finally at an age where you can point things out and she can see them or she'll ask good questions about the animals and listen while you read the signs about them. Of course Andy's reading all the signs himself which is also nice. So, even though it was crazy hot we had a pretty good visit.

After the zoo we went to a nearby pancake house. Open 24 hours. All of us love breakfast food, if you've ever been to our house on the weekend you know how much we love to do big breakfasts, so the kids were ecstatic to have breakfast for the second time in one day. Even better, we ended up having cereal for dinner so we actually had breakfast for every meal today. Overall, a great end to a great day, even with all the rule breaking involved.