recent outings

Okay, so maybe "recent" isn't the best word to describe them, but I still wanted to share some pics of a couple of fun outings even though they took place in close proximity to Easter which was, well, over a month ago. At least I'm catching up now, right?

The Explorium
Since Kris was off the week before Easter and since our little world was going through some major changes that prevented us from actually planning a vacation away from the homefront, we decided to take the kids downtown to the local children's museum. They had a great day, and so did we.


The Brookfield Zoo
While we were in Chicago for Graham's baptism, we decided that it was a beautiful Saturday and we had time to kill before the baptism on Sunday, so we packed up the crew and headed to the Brookfield Zoo. They had their dinosaur exhibit up with the giant animatronic dinosaurs. We thought that maybe Sam would be excited about seeing them...until we got there. It took quite a bit of convincing, several wipes of tears and a "lucky penny" to convince him to even enter the short walk through the giant robots. Kris and I just left Grace with Sarah and Nate to wander slowly through and take it all in while we hurried through and got the terrified little boy to the gift shop at the end as quickly as possible. On our way to the car later, though, he told us that his very favorite part of the zoo was the dinosaurs. Who knew?!

Waiting to go to the zoo!

On the way by these guys, Sam yelled "Hurry, Mommy! Take a picture!"
Ten minutes later, when we walked back by, they were still laying in the same place. :)

Grace is constantly rummaging through any bag she can find to look for snacks.

Scared to see (and hear!) the dinosaurs...

Tuckered out after a fun day at the zoo.