One week end, my daughter and her husband wanted to go away for a weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  And they wanted Gary and I to watch their kids for 3 days and nights!  Great Caesars Ghost!  I hope we don’t kill or maim any of them.  It has been a long time since we had to wipe butts and make sure no one got hurt or killed, so we made a plan.  Wear them out during the day so they would fall asleep at night with no complaints.

The first night I fed them what every kid likes

Is it soup yet?

Whoops, a little burnt

Looks yummy huh?  One likes soup, one likes the grilled cheese, Grandpa and Grandma like both.  A win win situation and easy to make.  First night done without a hitch.  I even brushed their teeth!  Good job Mema!

Second day we were going to take them to the Minnesota Zoo.  Big place, lots of walking, the kids will fall asleep by 6.  I figured we could save some time and avoid the long check-in lines so I bought the tickets on line in advance.  I checked the weather and it looked pretty good.  We make plans, and God laughs.  It ended up raining the day we went ☹, at least the part of the day we were there.

We figured we’d start out early so we could get there before it got too crowded.  As we are traveling on 494 I saw an overhead sign that said the road is closed at Hardman Ave.  What?  They aren’t going to close down the whole 494!  Hardman Ave exit must be closed.  As we got closer we came to a screeching halt.  Nope, they closed down the whole 494 and had everyone exit at Hardman, all 5 lanes of us.  So we begin inching along the highway.  The kids were really good.  You just had to point out all the interesting things you see as you creep along.  Look!  That lady is putting on her make-up!  Look at that cooler along the side of the road!  Look at that cool truck!  That person looks like they are grooving to the music!  So many things to see as you putt along.

We figured it wouldn’t be too much of  detour once we got off 494, we’d just snake around and get back on 494 on Concord.  ARG! Concord was closed for construction!  Welcome to Minnesota’s other season (I like it almost as much as I like winter).  So there were a zillion cars, all floundering around South St. Paul, smelling all the wonderful smells of South St. Paul, trying to figure out how to get back on 494.    Luckily, we had a former Truck driver at the wheel and Gary got us to Hwy 52 and back on to 494.

After our long detour, we finally made it to the zoo.

Minnesota Zoo

I am so glad I bought those tickets ahead of time to avoid the lines.  That did me no good at all, I still had to stand in line to show them the ticket I printed out.  And the $7.00 I paid for parking.  Skip that one next time, we’ll just say someone dropped us off.  There is no one to check to see if you parked your car or not.  Okay, okay, enough complaining, what did you see?

The first thing we saw was a small gift shop right as you walk in, of course the kids wanted to buy something right away.  “When we leave, if you are good, we’ll get you something”….always good to have a little bribery  to help keep the kids in line 😉.  And those sneaky Zoo people putting that gift shop right as you walk in knowing those doting Grandparents are going to buy their little kiddos something.

There was a fish feeding exhibit in the aquatic area that started soon and I wanted to go there first. We had to run past a bunch of exhibits to get to the fish tank on time

Aquarium

You can see the person’s long yellow hose that she is breathing out of.  She was talking to us and telling us all about the fish in the tank and what they liked to eat.  Well that was interesting…….for about 5 minutes and then they wanted to move on to see the other animals 😊.  I didn’t even get to see the whole show ☹.

So instead we saw a

Kimono Dragon

Can you see him?  He is lying on that log.  We walked by him several times and he never moved.  Maybe he’s stuffed LOL.

Then we saw some

Flamingos

When you’re the shortest guy in the group, a little help from Papa helps

Thanks for the boost Papa

Then we saw some rams

Hold your nose

At least I think they were rams.  What ever they were they looked like they were molting and they stunk a little too.  Let’s move on….

We saw lots of moneys

No! I am not a racoon!

Such a long pretty tail

And a few penguins

Penguins (no, that is not the ocean behind them)

Why can’t I climb up as high as those kids?

Most of the time the boys were more interested in what they could climb on or crawl into, must be a boy thing.

Then everyone was hungry and we had to stop for lunch

When will the buzzer go off?

Yum!  Hot Dogs, French Fries, and milk.  Grandparents get to feed them anything Hee hee hee 😉.

Unfortunately, the rain didn’t let up while we were there.

Whoa is me, where is my burlap sack?

Poor monkey, sittin in the rain all by himself.  The other monkeys seemed to ignore the poor little monkey by the pond.

I wish it would quit raining

Luckily, there were several trails inside that we could follow and explore.  There were several spots along the way that had places for the boys to climb on and tunnels to crawl into, like this one

Tunnel fun

That was great fun.  They’d go in and stay in there for hours!  Gary and I would head to the bar and have a few brews and come back to get them.  NOT!  What kind of Grandparents do you think we are?  We watched them like hawks to make sure no one grabbed them.  Gary would be at one end of the tunnel and I would be at the other, that way they couldn’t escape.   It would not be good if someone got snatched.  Oh sorry, we lost your kids at the zoo ☹.

After we saw everything we could and because the oldest grandson kept asking, we let them stop at that little shop and pick out a toy.  Luckily I avoided the very large gift shop with sooooo many choices, otherwise we’d still be there.

We arrived home with no traffic jams and no detours.  That night we served them Culvers, easy pezy.  Kids meals all around, which include a free scoop of ice cream.  Perfect ending to an almost perfect day.  And I remembered to brush their teeth again.  Hey!  I’m getting the hang of this LOL.