Mom, The Zoo, Fireworks

What a busy day we had yesterday! And you can't believe how many pictures I took so I'll post a small sampling here. We got a fairly early start to the day because we wanted to go to the zoo. My Mom's house is on the way so we stopped in to see her. I don't have enough pictures of the two of us together so I had Marty take a couple for me. Her house is great for pictures because it's like a jungle. There are trees and green stuff everywhere you look!

After our quick stop at Mom's, we were off to the zoo. However, it started pouring as soon as we got in the car. But that didn't deter us. We have had to make do this summer and just go places even if we get wet. It rains every day! By the time we made it to the zoo, it had mostly stopped raining and we had fun. Marty says I never enjoy the zoo because I'm too busy taking pictures. While we were riding the monorail, he said, "You act like you've never been to the zoo before!" Whatever. I kept the camera out. But then I missed a few shots because we couldn't stop laughing about the dik-diks! Who thought up that name anyway? Oh look at the cute little dik-diks!!! Still makes me laugh!

Here are a few of the pictures I took. (If you want to see any of them bigger, just click on them.) Marty will kill me for posting the one of us together because he thinks he looks funny. But everytime we go anywhere, I have to take one of those pictures where you hold the camera in front of you and hope for the best. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory. While on the monorail, there was a great shot of the Dallas skyline. The one where the kids are underground is in the mole hole. And Nick, Austin and Lauren are dressed as zookeepers in the picture where they are wearing big clothes.

After we left the zoo, we stopped by our gym and did a little maintenance since we were closed for the holiday. Even though we have only been in the new building less than 3 months, there were lots of paint touch-up spots. So we did that and a few other things while the kids played in the gym.

We finally got home at about 6:00 and just hung out until it got dark so we could do fireworks. We did sparklers and bottle rockets and poppers and some firecrackers. I burnt the crap out of my toe with a sparkler. Those of you that know me well know that I never wear shoes. Well, perhaps next year I will rethink that while doing fireworks. But I wasn't the only one. Marty burnt his head. But the kids were fine and that's all that matters, right?

Firework pictures never come out well, but I played around with a couple just for fun. That's Mackie on the left and Nick on the right.

The city of Grand Prairie does their fireworks show over the lake by us. So at about 9:30, we had a really good view of that from our upstairs windows. We could also see Cedar Hill's fireworks show which was going on at the same time. So it was nice not to have to drive anywhere to see the fireworks and we got the kids in bed by 10:00. It was a very long day.

I won't be posting for several days. I'm spending the night at my mom's house tonight and they are driving me and Lauren to the airport early Friday morning. My sister is getting married in Cleveland on Saturday so I'll be in Ohio all weekend. And for those of you who asked ... yes ... we finally found some sparkly silver shoes for Lauren to wear in the wedding. Thanks for your concern. LOL!

And you know I can't end a post without some music. I've been talking a lot about pictures in this post so how about one of my favorite songs ... Picture by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.