Thursday the kids had no school. The teachers went to class instead. :) We hung out in the morning. Well, they hung out, I did gross stuff like clean bathrooms and wash dishes. Then after a late lunch we went over to the zoo to try and get a closer look at the baby lions. When we had gone a couple weeks previously, there had been such a crowd in front of their enclosure, we couldn't get more than a glimpse of them. We thought what with it not being a normal holiday, we had a pretty good chance of smaller crowds. But first, I had to drop something off at my friend, Jenna's.
That turned out to be a huge ordeal, and turned what is normally a 25 minute ride to the zoo into an hour long exploration of all the byways, highways and tunnels in, around, and through Zurich. Stupid GPS not being clear enough! If you tell me to go on the A3, but keep to the left, but the A3 goes to the right, how am I supposed to interpret these directions? I can either keep to the left OR get on the A3, but not both. In my confusion, I made a guess, which turned out to be a the most wrongest of guesses possible. But eventually, we did make it to the zoo. I again had to apologize to the children and explain to them that some kids had mothers who can't cook, some kids have mothers who hit them, my kids have a mother who always, no matter what, gets lost. It is their burden in life.
Once we got to the zoo, there were very good signs of smaller crowds, as we actually found a parking spot on our first pass through. We were there to see/do three things; baby lions, crocodiles, popsicles, playground. There were hardly any people by the lions, and they were actually out where we could see them, so that was very fun. Sarah wishes we could take them home as pets. They were rather adorable.
The crocodile was in a large building with several other animals, and since we were already there, we looked at all of them. In my haste to get out the door, I had forgotten to bring a stroller for Alexandra. I was hoping that since we didn't want to see too many different animals, I wouldn't have to carry her too long. She ended up walking the whole time, and did a great job. It was actually a plus not having a stroller in spots, because it was easier to navigate the stairs and certain trails without it. This building was full of such stairs.
Being spring, there were tons of baby animals to gaze at. It's amazing how pretty much baby anything is adorable. Even tapirs. Sadly, there was only one crocodile out that day, but at least he was pretty close to the glass. I also learned that Noah is the most observant of all my children. He could spot the snakes, lizards and frogs faster than any one else inside their glass houses. The rest of us would walk up and say, "Oh, only one snake in here." Then Noah would point out the other 3 in quick succession. We caught on pretty quick to just ask him to show us where the animals were hiding.
Now that we had seen all the animals on our list, we headed over to the playground for some popsicles and fun. Alexandra has been making great strides in her eating skills. She held on to that popsicle all by herself and ate the entire thing, without dropping any on the ground. Her hand and lower arm were covered in melted, sticky popsicle goo by the end, but I had plenty of wipes to clean that up with. It is getting to be so much easier to go on these outings with her now. She is such a big girl!
On the way home, we picked up Chris from work and drove back through the new tunnel. The one that they first started planning/talking about almost 40 years ago. Oi! But it wasn't as much of a thrill as he had hoped, we had already gone through it during our crazy detour earlier in the afternoon. It is fun to drive through them when they are still so clean and shiny! The paint is actually white!