Como Zoo, etc.

Well, Jace is gone. He has officially left the state of Minnesota and is back on Georgia soil. He was soooo excited to go back! Five weeks is a long time for a little boy.

We tried to make his last weekend as memorable as we could. He came down to the cities on Friday with mom and dad after making a stop in Bemidji to see dad's surgeon. Jace informed the doctor that he took care of his grandpa after his surgery and even gave him some of his own medicine. The doctor shook his hand saying that was a very noble thing to do. So Friday night we went out for pizza at Old Chicago then did some mall walking to wear it off. Jace had a blast running around with grandpa and swinging between mine and grandpa's hands through the mall. When we got home we had some birthday cake and cupcakes that mom had brought down for my birthday. (yum!)






Saturday morning, after climbing a few trees and playing catch in the back yard, we had a date with Naphtali and Aidan to meet at the Como Zoo. So did about 100,000 other people. The zoo was packed. But we made the haul anyways. This was my first time to Como, and I thought it was really cool, especially for being free. The only bummer about it was that it was a pretty cool day, so a lot of the animals were inside. So it was a little difficult at times to keep track of our whole party amongst 100,000 other people and their 50,000 strollers (I'm only exaggerating a little).





After strolling through the conservatory, we saw flamingos, spider monkeys, zebras, giraffes (my fav.), tigers, lions, reindeer, snow leopard, fish, penguins, sea lions -- we even got front row seats to the sea lion show, which was quite impressive -- and orangutans. I think we were all in agreement that the orangutans were the favorite animal of the day! We could have sat and watched them for hours! There was a mom, dad, baby, and a grandparent and they were so entertaining! Jace so badly wanted to go inside the fence and just talk to them, and didn't understand why that wasn't such a good idea. He is such an animal lover. At every exhibit he would ask mom or dad or I, "How do you speak orangutan?" or "How do you speak flamingo?"


















After our time in the zoo, we let the kids go to the amusement park part of Como and Naphtali had four tickets for the boys each to use for one ride. So they both chose to "Driving School" where they got to drive the little cars around. Aidan was hilarious and only drove around the same loop over and over and over! So I had to zoom way in to get a shot of him! They had a blast though and were even issued "driver's licenses" on the way out.





What a day! We were pooped by the end of it. And starved! So we met James at Famous Dave's for a nice filling lunch! Thanks, Kahls, for hanging out with us again and coming along to the zoo! What a fun day!

Sunday was church, one final lunch with Jace, and then off to the airport.