What a Zoo!

Today I want to tell you about three things that define my personality… kids, animals, and insanity! I decided to combine all three today when I took my Girl Scout troop to the zoo. I told the girls to meet at my house this morning at ten. This proved to be a little too early for me since I was up late visiting with my bloggy friends. I drug myself out of bed at nine, then after a quick shower I woke all the kids. Even though this was a Girl Scout outing, I was taking my boys too, so that meant there were 10 of us to get ready, 10 lunches to make, 10 bodies to sunscreen, and 20 shoes to find. All that before ten o’clock.

At 9:55 the phone rang. When I hung up the phone at 10:02, I stepped into the living room to put on my shoes. Dazed, I realized that in those seven minutes, all of the Scouts and several moms had infiltrated my house. This was totally unprecedented! In my 17 years of scouting, I don’t remember a time when NOBODY was late. Fifteen minutes later we were loaded and ready to go.

The zoo was fun, but crowded for a Wednesday. We waited in line for about 20 minutes just to get our tickets; then we waited again to enter. The kids were mesmerized by the giant water globe just inside the gate and it was difficult to convince them that we came to see animals, not rocks.

This seemed to be a recurring theme. When we were in the monkey house, they had a special display of dinosaur bones and I could hardly drag the kids away. They also had huge mechanical dinosaurs scattered throughout the zoo grounds. Again, the girls were more interested in seeing which ones squirted water than in checking out the giraffes (my personal favorite).

About the time we rounded everybody up at the elephant pavilion, the rain came pouring down. So we lined everybody up in the stadium seating for the shows and pulled out our lunches. Our only mishap happened when one of the girls spilled applesauce all over herself and the stone seats. By the time the rain dried up we were ready to move on. We visited the rest of the exhibits (except that I stayed outside of the reptile house and fed Baby Doll while the girls wandered around with our other adult helpers. I don’t love snakes).

We made one last stop at the playground where the Drama Queen shared her Oreos with everybody (now that’s the true spirit of giving, I was ready to eat the whole package myself). Then we headed for the parking lot, but not before the kids all had to touch the giant globe again. Seems like we didn’t learn much on our trip to the zoo…I hope the animals all enjoyed looking at us!