First trip to the zoo

We took the kids to the zoo for the first time today, and all had a great time. The twins walked around at first while Sarah rode in the stroller, then Jimmy & Katie wanted to ride so I carried Sarah in the sling. She was so comfy she had an extra little nap before lunchtime while we strolled through the Florida exhibit.

J & K loved seeing the animals, though the ones that were far away or sleeping weren't of much interest. Fortunately this zoo has plenty of up-close exhibits, including the friendly goats at the children's area (we might try going into the petting zoo next visit), a platform where you can feed special crackers to a giraffe (we didn't buy any, but the the giraffe didn't know that so was up close anyway), penguins in a glass enclosure, the underwater windows into the fish & manatee pools, and plenty more.

We stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants there, where Jimmy and Sarah stuffed themselves with chicken nuggets and Katie decided that french fries were the order of the day (she'd had a couple earlier, at snack time). We spent a little more time after lunch in the Asian habitat area, which had some really interesting animals like the Sloth Bear and Bearded Pigs, then headed for home when everyone began looking sleepy. Katie conked out before we even got her strapped into her car seat, and Jimmy wasn't far behind. Sarah was well rested from her extra morning nap, but still dozed a little. We drove around for about an hour to let them sleep and managed to time it just right to be home just a few minutes after they woke up, ready for snacks!

There are several more photos from our day on the April 2009 page.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We took the kids to an Easter egg hunt, their first, over the weekend. Fortunately the age groups were separated so we didn't get trampled. They didn't quite understand the idea of collecting the eggs, so almost as many came back out of their baskets as went in, but they had fun while they were at it. We got to spend quite a while at the playground there too, and Katie caught on to the "big kid" swing with some help from Daddy -- then didn't want to get off. Jimmy enjoyed swinging with Kirby, and Sarah had fun just walking around and swinging with Mommy.

Another highlight of the day was lollipops -- another first for Jimmy and Katie. Katie went to town on hers right away, Jimmy wasn't even sure he wanted to put his in his mouth (funny, he'll put nearly anything else in his mouth!). Once they got a taste of the sweets, their first reaction was to try to brush their teeth with the lollipops. It made sense once I thought about it -- the only thing they have that tastes like candy is their toddler toothpaste. Funny how those little brains work!

The empty plastic eggs seemed to be as big a hit as anything else, so Easter morning they got baskets full of those, plus some other toys. Speaking of toys, I have determined the toy preference hierarchy: 1. dirty diaper, 2. clean diaper that Mommy needs to put on someone, 3. box of diaper wipes (must be CLOSED when Mommy needs to get one out, but when no one's looking must be OPEN and emptied one wipe at a time), 4. any of the other 190385476573 toys in the room.

New April 2009 album page with photos from the egg hunt, our new backyard playhouse, and more. There's also a new video (as of last week) with some cute twin stuff on our YouTube playlist.