Kids' Day, 4th Edition

This weekend we celebrated our fourth Kids' Day!  For the history of Kids' Day, you can click on the following links to read the original posts:

The Origin of Kids' Day

First Kids' Day, Part II & III

Kids' Day 2009

Kids' Day 2010

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So, this Kids' Day was a little different than usual.  See, we will be moving soon, and so we decided to do this summer's Kids' Day in the new city we'll be living in so the kiddos could get introduced to where we'll be living.  We made it a weekend trip with two nights in a hotel.  Poor Riley was so confused, thinking the hotel was our new house at first.  :)

We drove to our destination city on Friday.  Jamie was busy with work (he's been working for some time in the city we'll be moving to, commuting to and from home) while the kids and I spent the day with Shirmy.  I will be writing a specific post about this for tomorrow, so I'll just leave it at that for now.  

On Saturday we had breakfast in the hotel, took Shirmy to the airport, said goodbye :( , and then went to our main Kids' Day attraction - the Zoo!  When planning Kids' Day I specifically said I did not want to go to the zoo.  The zoo is always hot, especially in August, and then the animals never seem to be out, everyone gets tired and grumpy by the end and it just never seems to live up to the hype.  Well... somewhere along the way I changed my mind.  We had never been to this zoo, and the website made it seem like a pretty great zoo.  The weather was supposed to be more mild than it has been lately, soo... off we went, to the zoo.  :)

I was both right and wrong.  I was right in that by the end of the day everyone was very tired and grumpy.  I was wrong in that the animals were out and it wasn't a letdown- overall anyways.  :)  And the kids seemed to have fun, so that's what matters, especially on Kids' Day!

 They loved posing on all the animal statues.

 The Big Papa Lion was lounging pretty close to the fence.  He was separated from the females and young this particular day because it was "Bone Saturday," and he was stealing all the bones for himself.

 We actually got to see the real tiger walk about.  This tiger was fun to pose on, of course while getting Haddie down I totally ran into the paw of it and it gave me a nice gash on my shin.  :)  Always the graceful one I am.

 Riding the Carousel was one of the highlights of the day.  Everyone had a great time!  Of course leaving the carousel proved challenging for certain people two and under.  Some screaming, flailing and gnashing of teeth may have ensued.

 Checking out the male kangaroo.

 The Koala.

Ah, the boat ride.  This would be what one would call a low of the day.  Sophia enjoyed herself.  Jamie and Riley had a delightful time.  Hadassah on the other hand (and thus me, as I had the privilege of restraining her sitting with her) did not so much have fun.  Before we even boarded she was screaming and flailing about in my arms.  The entire ride she screamed and flailed.  I felt bad for the childless couple who had the unfortunate luck to be aboard the same boat as "the family with the screaming child."  :)

By the time we left, indeed everyone was tired and fussy, but we had had a lot of fun and were thankful that when, at one point Riley managed to walk away from us, was found by Jamie only a few minutes later (terrifying by the way!).

We made our way back to the hotel and enjoyed a quiet dinner, baths for the kids and an early bedtime!

Sunday we got to worship at the church that we will soon call our own and even got to give the kids a peak at the house we'll soon be living in.  We ended our weekend adventure with ice-cream and sorbet and everyone was indeed happy!

:)