A Short Day, With a LONG Story!

So really the most exciting news of the weekend was our lead tech's wife had her baby yesterday! Hooray! But since she also blogs...I'll let her be the first to blog about it. :-)

Yesterday was Saturday and due to rep issues, we only had a small team go out in the morning. After a unfruitful, unmotivated day, they called it in early and we went down to Culumbus to the Jack Hanna Zoo.

Luckily it's only about 1 1/2 hours away so even though we left late, we still got to enjoy some great things. We rushed through the zoo to our favorite animals.

Here's Derek, Jordan & Makayla riding a warthog. They had these statues of different animals all over the place, but they were in memory of humans who donated them. Weird. I wouldn't want mine to be the warthog p.s.

They also had a really cool play area, so while Derek went shopping for his niece we let Makayla run around in here for a bit.

It's always stressful letting your kids go for the first time. I don't know where this tunnel leads, but I hope Jordan is at the other end!

This is Colo. The first gorilla born in captivity. She was born in 1956. Really neat. I LOVE gorillas. I think I could have been another Jane Goodall in another life :-)

They also had an aquarium. Makayla LOVED looking at the fish. Every time one would come by she would point and say "fish" and look up at us to make sure we were watching too.

We rushed the zoo because attatched to the zoo was a water park. And since we had this brand new, never been tested water camera...

Well, we HAD to test it right?

The water was FREEZING though. Especially since it was getting pretty late. That only made it worse!

Then Makayla and I found the heated baby pool. So we played there while Jordan Derek rode all the rides they could. This is one of the many slides they had in the baby pool. And Makayla could actually slide down this one all by herself! What a brave girl!

She kept slipping while walking in the water. And for some reason she always fell FORWARD! Stressful! But she would get up and cough and start right back into what she was doing before she fell again.

Family portrait at the Baby pool. Look at all the fun things there are to do in here! Makayla went nuts in here! It was great. Especially since our pool at home has only deep and deeper water, it was great to let her splash around and walk around by herself. She loved it!

And I loved because I knew she would sleep great that night!

This was probably one of her favorite things. Every time we went under she would clap and scream and say "again!" so we would do it again! She is such an adventurer :-)

After all of that we were STARVING! So we went to a mall strip nearby (where there just happened to be a Lego store...) And found a great little Mongolian BBQ! I LOVE MONGOLIAN BBQ! Jordan had never had it before so it was fun to introduce him to it.

He also ordered a Lemonade Desert Pear drink. It came back purple! So funny! You could hardly taste the lemonade for all the pear juice!

So it was a crazy, eventful, fun, exhausting day. That really only lasted from about 3-4 till 2-3 AM :-)

But it was great and now I'm ready today to go meet the new little Merkley baby, relax by the pool, maybe go to a park. All in all, just do nothing :-)

What a perfect weekend.!

And thus begins the countdown to our last month here in Ohio. We still have so much to do. Go visit my Grandparents, go to Toronto, Swim in Lake Eerie and maybe more. So far this has been a great summer and I'm sorry to see it going, but who knows where we will be next month, or who we will be with. I am excited to find out!

:-)