Dashed plans

Maybe I should change to title to plans on a dash... Well, as you know, Michael and I are somewhat spontaneous. We enjoy deciding last minute to take a far away long trip and hope that gets us closer to never coming back to Rexburg. In this case, I was the one making the plans and they happened to be a couple months in advance. So this example is nothing like what we normally do. So just forget the first part and start reading.... NOW. I decided I wanted to go to the zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah during the break between semesters. Michael's brother lives there, quite close to my destination, so I figured maybe I could visit them while I was there. So the plan was to meet up with a couple of my friends and some of there family and hang out at the zoo, maybe go to the aquarium after that. It was going to be something like 6 adults and 5 kids. Laura (my sister-in-law) has 3 beautiful children, babysits one during the day and I have awesome Ivan. That makes 5. Originally this sounded good, we could totally handle 5 kids with that kind of kid-to-adult ratio. After a rather gut wrenching day at work (10 hours of work including an emergency C-section, 6 puppies to revive, and a HBC) I left for Utah about 6 hours later than I had originally intended. Ivan was a good boy and slept almost the whole time. Lucky me, he woke up about a half an hour away from Laura's and played in the backseat. When I left it was just getting to be dusk outside, the worst time in the day to drive. Ever. I had barely left town and I saw a moose on the side of the highway. Awesome right?! Nope, scared me to death because it was right by Bear World and I thought the bears were escaping and making some kind of transformer giant bear. And the moose was right by the road and cross the highway right after I passed it. Shortly after that, a tumble weed crossed the road in front of me and I knew it would be a safe drive the rest of the time. For those of you from an area where tumble weeds are an every day thing, lucky you. I didn't have this luxury growing up and I think it's one of the coolest things ever. After all, it is the little things in life that make everything worth it, right? I made really good time.... maybe too good. So that was Monday. Tuesday we were going to leave for the zoo at 10. But, there were a lot of kids at Laura's house and Ivan and Ben just love playing together so we left probably closer to 11. I told my friends we were on our way because they were going to meet us there and I got a text back that one of them decided to go home to Minnesota and the other went home to North Carolina! Ah! While I am happy for them that they were able to visit their homelands and see their families, I was pretty sad that I had actually made plans way far in advance and they had been dashed. Oh, that's where the title comes in! So now here we are, me and Laura, with 5 kids. Our ratio dropped significantly especially since we only had 1 stroller that carried 2 kids. Laura, the warrior that she is, strapped her 8 month old baby to her and put 2 kids in the stroller she pushed. I pushed Ivan in a stroller and the other kid walked. This worked to get us in the entrance. Then one of the kids in the stroller wanted to walk so we switched Ben (the strapped on one) to the stroller and let Megan walk. So now we have 2 kids walking and 3 kids in strollers.


 Have I mentioned that the Hogle Zoo has a lot of hills? That's really not that fun to push strollers up and down. And it was really nice that day. Something like 70+ degrees out and my Idaho dwelling butt was not used to it! By the end of the trip, about 2 hours, Megan (the one walking) decided she wasn't going to listen anymore and couldn't walk. So I took Ivan out of the stroller and carried him while pushing Megan in the stroller. I would have to say that at least 1 more adult or another double stroller would have made this trip easier, I really enjoyed it. It was fun to people watch, the schools in that area were on spring break so there were lots of people. And there was this giraffe that would stick her tongue (yes it was a her) out the right side of her mouth and lick the left side of her face! Crazy! I love the zoo.

This giraffe is licking the right side of his face with his tongue out the left side of his mouth!

 After we left, I wanted to go to the pioneer monument thing right across from the zoo but decided I was too hot and tired of walking. But, I did see an elk as I was headed back to my car! Back to the plan. I was going to leave Utah on Tuesday night, then it was pushed back to Wednesday morning, then it kept pushing back from there. I just had to go to Ikea. And In and Out. And the Village Inn. And I was on a quest to search for a jogging stroller. REI is a really expensive store that carries awesome jogging strollers and outdoors stuff, but man would it be nice to be able to afford shopping there some day. Oh someday. I did end up finding a stroller. I got super lucky and stopped by a thrift store, like the kind where you sell your stuff to it and other people buy it. Laura gave me the tip, man she's the best. I found this stroller called the Valco Baby. You should check it out. This stroller ranges in price from $375 to $500 plus any accessories. The stroller I got is a little dirty, but it just got there that day. 2 other people had already come by to look at it and one said she was coming back to get it. So I snatched it! You can kinda attach a car seat into it, there are 5 different settings of the back rest. There is a basket, all wheels are removable, the front wheel locks and unlocks, it folds down to the same size as any other stroller, and there are attachments (on the website) to add a second seat instead of buying a whole new double stroller! And I got it for $85! What a steal! I'm so excited. Can you tell? Spending time with Chris and Laura was really fun though. It's crazy how much her kids grow so fast when I only see them in like 3 month increments. I came home on Thursday and that was the end of my trip. Here are some pictures of awesomeness.

From left to right: James - 4 months, son of Mailee and Spencer. Spencer is Michael's cousin.
Ivan - 6 months, mine, starting to crawl but definitely army crawling across the floor.
Ben - 8 months, son of Chris and Laura. Chris is Michael's brother. Army crawling and definitely the tallest of them all.