Mini-Vacation: Day 2

My, my where to start! We had a very busy day today! We started out the morning with breakfast in our hotel and then headed off to find a Walmart so that I could get a memory card for my camera. While at the store we also decided to take out $10.00 in "trip insurance" by purchasing two umbrellas - if we are prepared then it won't rain tomorrow while we are at the zoo :) After the store we headed off to the Field Museum! We had so much fun!! The kids wore bandannas on their head and pirate hats and patches over their eye to celebrate "Talk Like A Pirate Day". They were met at the door by a pirate who signed them up to a pirate crew and they received their first wages - a gold coin. They were all very excited to be "official" pirates - probably Benny most of all since he is in a "pirate phase" right now. I'm sure he's going to be a pirate for Halloween now. We saw the "Real Pirates" exhibit and everyone really loved it. It was very interesting to learn the differences between pirate myths and reality. Neat exhibit. We also did the "Underground Adventure" where it seems like you are shrunk to 1/100 of your size and go underground to see what things look like. I thought it would be fun to make a big deal about the whole "shrinking" thing and tell the kids how cool it was going to be to be tiny...etc... Well obviously I shouldn't have done that in the late afternoon during what would normally be nap time. Benny and Grace completely freaked out ... tears and everything. It took us a good 10 minutes to get them calmed down. Oops. In the end they liked it though - I think. We went through "Ancient Egypt" and "China" and saw "Sue" as well as seeing most of the animal exhibits before we realized that they were closing the museum early for some sort of function. Darn it - we missed half of the museum! We signed up for an annual Family pass (it was actually cheaper than admission for all of us) so we can go back anytime in the next year. After we left the museum we went to Mekeli & Jamie's house. Reid & Charly came over too and we all ate pizza and got to visit. It was nice because we hadn't seen them in a while. I think that Reid, Charly, and Jamie are going to go with us tomorrow when we go to the zoo. Once we got back to the hotel of course it was time for the water park. Emma and Grace spent the whole time in the kiddie area again except for a while on the river. I don't think we have pictures of Patrick at all in the water park because he wasn't still enough to catch on camera! He was on the big slides practically constantly!! I did catch him a few times on the river though. I raced him on the big slide a few times. I'd take the tube slide and he'd go down the body slide and he beat me every time! Except for the one time I made him trade slides! We had a blast and the kids were exhausted and hungry when we got back to the room a while ago. They had some crackers and some cereal and a drink before they crashed out in bed! Mark & I only have the girls in our room with us tonight - the boys were fighting over who got to sleep in Nannie & Grandpa's room with Nathan so all three boys are sharing a bed tonight. I'm glad it's Daddy & Diana's room and not ours :) Time for some rest now to get ready for the zoo tomorrow. The kids are excited to see some "live" animals now since all the ones they got to see today were dead:)