The Zoo

Hyrum is on Spring Break this week. I wanted to take the kids to the zoo sometime while he was home, so when a friend sent out a general invite to join her this morning, I decided to seize the moment. We stopped by the home of a sister in the ward who needed some help getting started on making curtains, then made our way downtown. Since we've been going to the bio-parks during the off season, it didn't occur to me that on the first day of Spring Break the zoo would be packed. I got the message that my friend wasn't going to be there after all, and considering I was already feeling an uncomfortable amount of anxiety just driving around the parking lot, I tried to convince the kids that we come back another day. They of course were not sold on that idea, so we unloaded and joined the throng. They mostly just wanted to play on the big jungle gym, so we went straight there and stayed almost an hour. Something triggered a tantrum in Mercy, so I gathered the boys and hoped walking around a bit would calm her down. She didn't want to ride in the stroller and was alternately screaming and flailing around. With so many people there and two little boys I was already having a hard time keeping track of, I wasn't about to let her get out and walk too, so after stopping to feed the ducks, we made our way to the exit. There were some artistic-y rocks and trees along the sidewalk on the way to the car, so we detoured to play on them for a while and that was probably the best part of the outing.