Road Trip!

Wednesday night, our friends Jeannie and Elise came to our house.  On Thursday morning, we packed up the car and headed south.  We left the house a little after five, and arrived in North Carolina around 6.  We made a few stops, including this one for lunch at a playground with picnic tables and one later on for ice cream.  The kids were absolutely amazing on the ride down.  They read books on tape, sang songs, played games, opened presents when we got to new states, and looked at a lot of books.

We had planned to go to a really nice park with a playground, mini train, carousel, and boat ride on Friday. On our way there, the rain started and it didn't look like it was going to end any time soon.  We went to the Greensboro children's museum (with everyone else in the city) and played all morning. The kids got to try out race cars, fire trucks, airplanes, and a police car. Ethan even got to be the fire man on the train, just like his grandpa White.

Ethan was thrilled to go camping with Pa, he keeps bugging us to take him so this was great. He wanted to climb in all the tents.

We also delivered mail, went grocery shopping with grandma, made pizza, played with trucks, and shopped at the book store. Pa rolled him in a barrel for a while. He was running around so fast that I barely got any good pictures.

On Saturday, we went to the zoo.  For weeks Ethan has been asking to go to the "Giraffe Zoo" since before he even knew we were going to NC.  He was not going to rest until he saw them. So even though our plan was to see North America, we had to go see the giraffes in Africa first.  That done, we saw the crocodiles and alligators, checked out the polar bear getting an icy treat, saw some sea lions and a few other things before heading home for lunch.

In the afternoon we stopped by a few stores then took the kids to the playground to make up for it. Though they didn't seem to mind, Pa entertained them the whole time. Anyway, the playground was hot and sunny so Ethan stole my hat.  After that, we went to Cookout where Grandma and Pa treated Ethan, Elise and the rest of us to burgers and shakes.

When we got back home we let the kids try out the kiddie pool. They had a blast, and Ethan decided to throw all the water out of the pool to make a river on the tarp that was under it. 

Sunday we went back to the zoo to see Africa, and we actually fed the giraffes. That was pretty great. We were giving them mulberry leaves. we also saw hippos, elephants, white crocodiles, zebras, and a few other things.

We played in the afternoon and the kids played piano with Grandma. Then it was time for bedtime stories. We drove back yesterday, it took the same amount of time, the kids were also very good though the nap situation did not go quite so well.  But we might just do this again, they had a lot of fun and so did we.