Day Out with Grammy Part 2

After a long day downtown, we drove back home. The kids had a nice rest in the car, while I actually was able to talk with my mom without being interrupted every thirty seconds. I love, love, love the kids, but their energy and conversations wipe me out most of the time. We had planned to pick up a chicken dinner at Jewel for dinner, but we weren't quite hungry yet. By the time we drove down to the Riverwalk area, the kids were close to waking up.

We went down a path I've never been down before and came to a really pretty area by the river. I love how we keep doing that...discovering new places within just a mile of our house. I get so anxious to travel and explore new places (so much that I'm working on planning a year long round-the-world trip for us in the future), that I forget that there are still many places near my own house that I have yet to explore.

We came down to this section of the river because my mom had ridden her bike down here and saw a large area filled with clam shells. Sure enough, the ground near the river was littered with them.

There were different varieties of shells. The kids helped fill the camera bag, and we decided to use them soon in some kind of art project.

Later that evening, after our chicken dinner, we watched The Incredible Mr. Limpet before crashing into bed.

I've included the above picture of the rhinoceros because it was one of only two animals we saw at the zoo the following day, even though we were there for close to three hours. What did we do in the meantime? Mostly this...

It's amazing to me what fascinates kids. We're in this place with awesome animals to look at and the kids would rather collect acorns and thrash away at the leaves with sticks. Not that I'm complaining. I was able to sit on a bench with my mom and cheer them on instead of traipsing all over the zoo, which was a good thing since I had bad allergies that day.

We did pass through a new bison area, but they must have been hiding around some hill because we didn't seen any. It was cool to stand next to a life-sized picture of the bison and see how tall you were compared to it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the zoo's playground. The found several new friends, and once again I had a relaxing time chatting with my mom. During lunch, we had a crowd of geese begging us for food. We fed them, of course, and only felt a little guilty when we pass the "Don't feed the geese" sign when we walked out. At least they only had wheat bread and apples from us instead of nachos and chips.

The kids had a spin on the carousel once before we headed back to the car and on our way to great-grandma and Pappa's birthday party. I had to include this picture of Jared next to a car trunk we passed. Kind of difficult to explain to a four year old why some people find it funny to drive with a pretend foot covered in pretend blood hanging out the back of their car trunk.