Monkeying Around

I got the text early this afternoon that the power had been restored at work. I had anticipated that it would be back on and that I would be back at work tonight. But that didn’t stop us from taking advantage of the fact that I was home last night.

Sam had some clothes that she wanted to take up to the resale place today. We decided to make an outing of it. I loaded up the bins of clothes in the car, packed the stroller and drove up to the shop. A few miles away is the Saginaw Children’s Zoo, which the kids LOVE, so we had a great morning family outing there.

Ella could not wait to get into the zoo!

I’m not sure why, but the animals were extra active today. The penguins were waddling and swimming, the otter was really putting on a swimming show, the wolves were active, and the monkey’s were monkeying around.

The only problem with visiting the zoo on a weekday is that the same person runs the train and the carousel. So the train rolled in and the engineer told Ella that she needed to go run the carousel, but the train would run again in 30 minutes. Ella took this fairly well and she played in the sand and made a new friend.

Side note: I’ve said it before, but it is worth repeating. The world would be such a better place if we used kids as an example. Ella and another girl named Faith became instant friends at the playground. “I’m Ella!” “I’m Faith” and then they walked hand in hand for a while. Skin color, religion, gender, and political position didn’t matter at all. “Let’s be friends!” We adults could learn something from them!

We eventually made it back to the train and we got to ride it twice before going home. The girls (Mom and Ella) sat together and the boys (Dad and Andrew) sat together.

As you can see, she was just a tad excited.

Before we left, we stopped at the gift shop and got a new book to read at bedtime. It was SO nice to have that extra family time!