Last Minute Vacation

Make a Smilebox scrapbook This past Thursday evening we packed up the boys and head south to Fort Wayne, IN. Mike had heard that one of the country's top ten children's zoos was in Fort Wayne and seeing how our boys love seeing all the animals we thought it would be fun. I had to drop off a few bags in Caledonia, on the way out of town, okay maybe is wasn't really on the way out of town, but none the less we were still only 10 minutes south of our house (Hastings) when we stopped for supper 1 hour after we left. And that wasn't our only detour. Mike likes to take m-37 south to I-94 to I-69. and that's fine, except this time when we got to I-94 there was so much traffic backed up that we just kept going instead of turning onto I-94, not really knowing where we were. Of course Mike keeps defending himself by saying we were never really lost, but I beg to differ. If it wasn't for the nextel signal that kept going in and out of service and the google map on the nextel, I don't know if we would have gotten there at all. It was definitely an adventure. After stopping at three different hotels, we finally got to our room, (no, we don't make reservations before hand, that would mean we actually planned the vacation), and it was way past the boy's bedtime Of course they were excited because we were staying in a hotel room (we don't do that much) and they were making lots of noise and Mike was trying to keep them quiet so we didn't wake anyone. As the boys were getting their PJ's on we had to get out the sleeper sofa for the twins, go back the to front desk and get a pack -n-play for Connor (I'm so glad they had one.) and get Brendan into the closet...he was going to sleep on the floor. Finally the lights were out and it was quiet. Friday morning, I was thankful that Mike had picked a hotel with hot continental breakfast. And after two trips back to the hotel room, everyone got what they wanted for breakfast - Lucas and Austin had fruit loops, Brendan had Frosted Flakes, Mike and Connor had...well I'm not sure what they ate seeing how they ate in the hotel lobby and I had eggs, hash brown potatoes and sausage. It was really good and it was FREE!!!! Next it was time for the Zoo. The boys were so excited!!!! Of course we needed to find a bathroom right away, and Brendan was already getting impatient. It was a great zoo, much bigger than John Ball and more impressive than Binder Park. The only downfall was there weren't any African Animals-zebras, griffaes, lions, elephants. That exhibit was going to be finished next summer. That was a big bummer for me, because those are my favorite parts of any zoo. Brendan was super excited about seeing the komodo dragon. First the boys saw a statue of a komodo dragon and I think they thought it was real - none of the boys wanted to touch it until I told them it was pretend. Then we saw the real komodo dragon who was in his "hut" and after a few minutes decided to come out for the boys, Brendan thought that was cool. Some of the other favorites were the sea lions (we were there when the zookeeper was feeding them), petting the python snake(I kept my distance, I don't like snakes), and watching the monkeys. We had a great time even if we were only gone for 20 hours....until our next adventure.