Little People at the Zoo

Matt's summer break is, sadly, coming to an end. I know, poor me, right? I realize I will have very little sympathy from the larger population of you moms whose husbands have a more normal schedule. Matt likes to say that everyone else has "real jobs." Personally, I think his job is great and very real :) But, we are able to do so many things as a family that I know we wouldn't be able to do if he didn't have the little pockets of vacation he has every few months. We just spent two weeks in Tahoe (more on that to come!), and get so much family time over all of the holidays. I think I'd definitely be committed somewhere by now if not for his schedule that affords me a little break every now and then.

So, in an effort to maximize Matt's dwindling vacation (he does teach a six week chemistry class over the summer that ended right before we left for Tahoe, just in case you think he really has been loafing around the house all summer), we very spontaneously headed to the San Francisco Zoo on Saturday. Lucky for the girls, the day we went happened to coincide with the Fisher-Price Play Weekend! Basically, Fisher-Price had set up a big pavilion with all of their current toys, including ride-on toys for toddlers and a huge track for kids to test out the battery powered jeeps and trucks. They had every Little People set, all of their toddler toys, and a whole lot of "boy toys" (who plays with those I wonder??) that we didn't even get to. We seriously could have spent all day in this tent, since Little People are BIG favorites in our family. And who knew a trip to the zoo could be so low-maintenace? It was like free babysitting, since Fisher-Price employees were all over the place keeping Little People in the right spots, demonstrating toys and playing with the kids. (And there was a crazy Fisher-Price employee that was not-so-slyly taking pictures of the twins on her phone. Not the first time a stranger has taken pictures of the babies - weird, right?)

The girls had a blast!

The babies? Not so impressed:


But, when they woke up, they loved it!!

And, all four girls playing nicely with one toy? Yeah, Santa will be bringing that to our house this year!

When we escaped the Fisher-Price zone, we headed to the train and I got to ride with the girls for a change!

Later, we took turns getting some pictures of our doubled double stroller situation. Can you say spectacle?

It would have been nice to get all of us in the same picture, but we would have needed to flag someone down to get that shot, and that would have required making eye contact with someone else at the zoo. And, making eye contact with strangers is pretty much the opposite of what we (or, at least I) do when out with all four, since making eye contact invites long conversations and lots of questions and judgements. If we didn't just keep our heads down, we would be roped into at least a few conversations that would include any or all of the following:

"Are they all yours??"

"Two sets of twins?"

"Wow! You have your hands full!"

"Are you going to try for a boy now?"

"Better you than me!"

"Look at all of that blonde hair!"

"They are adorable!" (Okay, I don't exactly mind that one!)

Of course, we always politely laugh like we've never been told we have our hands full before. Tell me something I don't know, or haven't heard. Don't get me wrong, there are many days that I welcome small talk with nosy strangers. It still qualifies as adult conversation, right? I'll take what I can get sometimes. But, this day at the zoo was about about family time, not about the same conversation again and again with random people. So...no family picture.

We did get a few more cute shots, though. Bridget smiled for the camera (big surprise!):

And we got our flamingo shot. For some reason, the girls really like the flamingos every time we go to the zoo, so we get this shot every time:

The best thing about one of our double strollers? The babies love playing footsie :)

With our renewed annual pass, I'm hoping we head to the zoo more often now!