One Last Family Night at The Zoo

We had a beautiful day today and decided to enjoy one of the last days of summer with one last family night at the zoo. The boys and I may make it another time or two to the zoo before we leave, but I don't think Vince will make it with us.

There was a strange, and unexpected, sort of nostalgia that came over me as we walked through the zoo tonight. Vince and I began to talk about our time in Minot, remembering when we first arrived and talking through our final days here. When we came to Minot, Ezra was one year old. He is now 5 1/2, and we've added another 3 boys to the crew as well.

The zoo, on many days, was the savior of my sanity over the past 4 years. For being such a small town, Minot has a remarkably nice zoo, and it's a place of which the boys seem to never tire. It's a place we've gone many afternoons to burn some energy, enjoy being outside, or just to walk with friends. I think the only negative memory I have at the zoo here is when a hornet flew into Obed's mouth last summer and stung him 4 times... other than that, I've loved the zoo here.

Tonight, we packed a picnic for the boys and headed out. Please note Obed's ghetto lunch box. I don't have a lunch box for Obed, but wanting to do all things like the big boys, he needed his own lunch box. So I made Obed a lunch box... a Gladware container, two orange pipe cleaners, and voila, a homemade lunch box. He was pretty excited.

Solomon seemed kind of bored by the whole "family night" thing... he slept most of the time.
Picnic at the gazebo (the place which seemed to have the fewest number of bees).

Obed proudly toting his ghetto box.
Real men wear baby slings at the zoo.
The boys love the geese and ducks at the zoo. They enjoy calling to them, "here duck, here goosey" as they try to feed them corn, and then laugh hysterically when the ducks go head first into the water with their tails in the air, looking for the corn.
It was quite windy today (shocking) and Vince told the boys to try to catch leaves as they were falling from the tree. I think Asher's expression is priceless!
All the boys waiting for the wind to blow the leaves from the trees.
The giraffe.
Feeding the deer.
Obed the turtle with an extra growth out the side.