Zoo with the Skoo'

Just like last year, Easton's school did a school-wide family field trip to the zoo.

This Wednesday a week ago today (the 26th). That was another day that the kids crazily slept in for a very long time. Most people were meeting at the zoo at 9:00 but since we had an annual pass and didn't need to go in with everyone I wasn't in any hurry to wake those rascals up. I planned to just call people we knew when we got there or at the very least, meet up with everyone at lunch.

And that's what we did. We took our time getting up and ready for the day with packing lunches and applying sunscreen and all that jazz. We ended up arriving around 10:00 and I called April (Jacob's mom) and they had just gotten there as well. The only problem was that the zoo was the most crowded I'd ever seen it and we had to park super far away and hike over to the entrance. Eventually we met up with our friends and the first thing we saw was this peacock struttin' his stuff:


And Jacob was excited to see Easton:




We stuck with them (Jacob, April, and Sam) after that:


April then called Tabor's mom and we met up with them...and Emily...and walked over to where everyone was meeting for lunch:


We saw Mrs. L (the assistant teacher) for a group hug on the way:


We had some lunch with a big group of classmates and friends before heading on our way again with some of the extra friends. I had to get a shot of Autumn who was super-chill the entire day:

Everyone always remarks on Autumn's easy-going nature. She can hang so happily even without napping. The perfect third child. Hee hee.

We bought some cotton candy:


And posed the kindergartners together:


Took a spin on the carousel...Easton next to Tabor:


And how adorable is this???


Somehow Easton wound up hitching a ride with a wagon already full of 4 girls. Look how tickled he is to be in there...like he's getting away with something:


Posing with all the siblings we were wandering around with too. (Well not all, Autumn and Berkley stayed in the strollers.):


Dalton, Sam, and Holton...next year's class of preschoolers:


Easton making sure he still had a spot in the wagon:


With Easton elsewhere, my stroller had room for another and Sam plopped himself right in:


We were just about to start wrapping up our day...


...when the tornado sirens sounded. Not off in the distance. Right there. They only sound the sirens when there's a funnel cloud spotted in the area. Great. A few of the little girls started freaking out. I was being my calmest but Easton wasn't understanding the urgency in my voice when I told him I needed him out of the wagon and in my stroller with me. Needed all my babies close by. April apparently went to school for meterology so she took a look and we decided to make a break for the exit. We lost our other friends along the way but stayed with Weathergirl. The sirens had stopped by then but it was also threatening to thunderstorm so we were needing to be on our way anyhow. Only problem was, I was parked a zillion miles away. She offered to pile us all on the floor of her van and drive us over but our stroller wouldn't have fit so the boys hung in the van with her and Autumn and I booked it with the stroller to our car with the sirens starting again in the distance. Perfect. However, we made it to the car a lot faster than we would have if I had two extra boys weighing us down and we drove to pick up E and D before following April to the highway. If she was gonna pull over into a ditch, so was I. From her husband (on the phone) we got word the weather was just as threatening over the parts of town where we live (more tornado warnings in effect). Lovely.

I'm not much of a freaker-outer in such instances. I don't like to scare the kids... but the boys weren't completely unaware of what was going on, either. They'd heard the sirens too and I explained things matter-of-factly. So on our drive home, Easton got really worried about what would happen to all the animals at the zoo in the tornado and he then led us in a prayer asking God to keep the animals safe. Sweet, sweet boy.

We made it home completely unscathed and turned it into a big learning experience where Easton had lots of questions about tornados so we went online and learned about them and watched the news reports to see if we'd need to hide in the basement. Hail ended up being a huge problem for our neighbors several miles east of us. Pretty extensive and costly damage at their place but again, nothing noteworthy happening directly above our house, praise God.

We waited on Jason and did a simple dinner and that was the end of our exciting zoo day.