Joel and I both had Monday off so it was a perfect opportunity to jam pack the day with fun and excitment for the kids.  Little did we know that by 3pm, the two of us would be exhausted and the boys would still be going strong.

It started out with a 5:45am beep from my alarm clock.  Of course I hit snooze.  That was way too early to get up.  In fact, I hit snooze twice.  :)  Then we were behind the aggressive schedule Joel had set so out of bed I jumped – or more like stumbled.  Anyway, Joel and I were eating breakfast at 6:30am per the plan.  However, no peep was heard from the boys.  Hmmmmm – they are usually up at this time and per our plan, they should have been yelling at us to get them to breakfast.  About 10 to 7am, Dexter awoke.  Joel brought him down and started the feed.

You might be wondering at this point in time, what was driving this aggessive morning schedule.  We (Joel and I) wanted to try out the Mount Lake Terrace swim center.  We had heard it had an excellent kid pool and it’s open swim was from 7:30am to 9am.  Thus, our early morning start.  With Dexter up, that gave me an excuse to turn on the hallway light and rummage for clothes in the boys room with the hope that Nicky would wake up.  No dice.  I had to resort to rubbing his back and then jumping away so that he think it was just a coincidence that I was in his room when he woke up.  He’s been a little grumpy the last few mornings.

Anyway, breakfast and getting dressed for the boys followed and we were out the door only 15 minutes behind schedule.  On the drive there, the boys started to yell YELLOW any time they say something yellow.  Oh, and if a yellow car passed us – the excitement amped up to the level only a 2 year old boy can achieve.  We arrived at the pool and as soon as the boys saw it, they wanted to jump in.  One small problem – they didn’t have their swim suits on yet.  The one family room at the center was smaller than the ones at Forrest Park where the boys have had swim lessons so it was a little bit of a struggle to get ready to swim and the small garbage can in the room proved to be a little more fascinating than we wanted it to be, especially later, when we threw wet diapers away in it.

Once into the pool, the party began.  The boys could stand up themselves.  The bottom of the pool was covered in rubber so that Joel and I could walk around on our knees and not cring in pain.  It is a GREAT PLACE FOR KIDS!!!  I would highly recommend it.  The toddler area varied from 6″ to 3′ deep.  There were jets from below that shot up small fountains of water, a big yellow umbrella type thing that poured water down (so you could slip inside the waterfall), and a tall overhead pipe that dropped water on you from above.  I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

(Nic’s Australia reenactment)

After our hour long swim in the pool, we headed off to the Zoo.  We heard a tiger roar in hunger, saw wild dogs, a variety of monkeys, one big elephant, and a number of other animals.  It looked like the boys were going to crash on the way to lunch but somehow, they rallied, refused to eat, got a second wind and made us chase them all over the grassy field at the zoo.  From our experience in the field, we should now refer to unmanageable chaos as being “like herding Dexter and Nicholas”, a much more powerful image than “herding cats”.  We ended up tricking them into coming over to the edge of the field by both bending over and looking at something very intently on the ground, and poking it with a stick.  We were just poking the ground, but the boys came running to investigate.  Hah!  We outsmarted 2 year olds!  We have to celebrate, since it will probably never happen again.  We ended our zoo extravaganza with a ride on the carousel.  True to form, Dexter picked his horse first.  Nicholas would not sit on any horse around Dexter.  Finally, I asked “Well then, tell me where you want to sit.”  He pointed to Dexter’s horse.  I was not about to kick Dexter off so I place Nicky behind him.  He wrapped his arms around Dex and happily road behind him.  Once again, here are pictures to tell the story.

(mostly wanted to put that one in to prove that from some angles it looks like Joel still has hair)

After the ride, they refused to leave.  Ten minutes were spent watching them run around the carousel.  When they sat down on the ground, we knew it was time to leave.  Once in the car, Dexter was out almost immediately.  Nicky held on for 5 minutes before falling into a nice slumber.  Joel and I spent most of their nap at a second hand store looking for goodies for them – we were looking for a second shopping cart.  For you worriers out there, one of us was with them in the car the whole time we were stopped.  The end result was toys purchased and a too short nap for the boys.

Once again, on the drive home, when Nicholas awoke, he started to chatter quietly.  Then he saw a Yellow truck and yelled.  Dexter’s eyes fluttered open, but Joel floored it and we passed the truck quickly.  Dexter drifted back to sleep, but then Katie swore, and Joel noticed the yellow van in the right hand lane.  He sped up, desperately trying to keep a truck between us and the van, but the freeway went around a turn and the van was exposed (you know your life is getting surreal when you’re breaking traffic laws and weaving lanes on the freeway in order to avoid a line of sight on a yellow car).  Nic Screamed “YELLOW!  YELLOW!  YELLOW!” which subsequently woke up a very sleepy Dexter.  About this time, Joel and I were ready to crash but no, the boys would have nothing to do with that.  The garage door opened and we spent the next 2 hours playing in the garage.

Malin got back from her weekend away and took over for us so that we could go out to dinner.  What a vey peaceful way to end the day.

We had so much fun on Monday!  Hope you all did too.

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