Midweek Family Field Trip

As the girls are starting to get older and naps are becoming non-existent, Steve and I are realizing that we have to come up with more creative ways to fill our afternoons. If all the girls do during the day is go to preschool and then home to play around the house, they get "cabin fever" by late afternoon/early evening. Ironically, this is the same time of day that Steve goes to bed. This cabin fever turns into the "crazies" in a blink of an eye. So the math ends up like this- one parent with two overly bored toddlers and one daddy trying to sleep who can't because of the literal bouncing off the walls! So the solution has to be to tire them out in the afternoons so that the evenings are a little less daunting. It's hard though... Steve and I both work and are exhausted too. We'd love to just let them play at home so we can rest or get chores done around the house but we have to suck it up more often until dance class (for Charlie) and softball (for Ryan) starts up after the new year.
One of last week's afternoon field trips was to the Santa Ana Zoo.

I love this picture. If I didn't already have the whole Christmas card photo picked out, this would have been a cute choice! It took Charlie a while to realize these animals weren't real before we could convince her to climb aboard!

Ryan always likes to look at the lemurs when we go to the zoo.
She sings and dances from Madagascar and hopes they'll join in...
"I like to move it, move it! I like to move it, move it!"

Charlie spent most of her time on daddy's shoulders. She still wasn't quite sure of the whole fence thing between the animals and her!

Ryan posing to show Charlie that it is okay to get on top of the stone animals in the play area.
Can you believe she is almost 5 years old? What a big girl!

By this point, Charlie was ready for a horsie ride. She was saying, "Getty up Lizard, Getty up!"