Kait gets creative in the kitchen.

Loaded nachos Kaity-Jane style. 

Chicken, cheese, refried beans, jalapenos, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream, and tortilla chips. Also, purple nailpolish.

Seriously, this is the extent of what I have to post about today. I tried to get a picture of one of the kids but they just won’t stop moving already. Somebody was feeding them hyper pills I guess and it certainly wouldn’t have had anything to do with the 6 large bags of M&Ms I got at Publix the other day while they were buy one get one free.

Yeah. Definitely couldn’t be that because I’m certainly not the kind of mom that loads her kids up with sugar and sends them over to the neighbors house and only calls them home when she realizes that she needs a picture for blog material. I would never be that kind of mom.

I have two of them now. Daughters. Two daughters. It’s awesome.

As you can see, Lucy is already getting good at hollering at the boys. She’s telling them to knock it off in this picture. Also, the kangaroo in the background would be way more interesting except for we were on the Australian loop at the zoo and that sucks all the curiosity right out of it. My kids were more impressed with the sleeping alligators.

It’s funny that they find alligators more interesting than marsupials. We live in Florida, people. The alligator is our state mascot.  They are everywhere. We went to the little park not far from us and there was an alligator just sitting there. In the wild. The real wild, not the zoo wild. And I was like, Oh. great. Stay in the car everybody. And the boys were all like, I wonder if it escaped from the zoo! because they don’t get it.

We left the park shortly after taking this picture. I may live in Florida but I’m no friend of the gator. They have beady little eyes and have been known to hide under my 9 year old self’s bed for which I will never forgive them.  Also, we were on our way out of the park at this point anyway.

It would seem that my younger kids are getting the idea that wild animals evolve from caged animals and maybe we go to the zoo too much.

He’s 8. And he has a mohawk.

Matthew is my silliest child by far.  Always smiling, always joking, always ready with a prank. He thinks all girls are gross except Lucy. And possibly Kait because sometimes she has M&Ms. Or broccoli.

Matthew wants to be a superhero when he grows up. Either that or Julian Smith. One or both of these would make awesome careers. He’s also mentioned wanting to be a ninja.

Is there such a thing as a red headed ninja?

 Brush your teeth boys cause we’re going to see dinosaurs!

I got the zoo member’s email this morning that the $3 per person dino exhibit would be free today and I just couldn’t pass the opportunity to play hero-mom so we rushed out the door even before I had my coffee. It was an oversight that will not happen again.

The exhibit wasn’t what you’d call awesome, but the boys liked it okay. The dinosaurs all made noise and moved their heads and it kind of reminded me of larger versions of some annoying and mostly useless toys we’ve owned in the past.
One of the boys kept asking if we could go see a real animal, like an alligator. And another got excited about minnows in zoo’s the duck pond.

Joe just wanted to walk by the Komodo dragons but he posed under the Tyrannosaurus for me. 

And Jesse wasn’t interested in anything but hiding in the stroller basket.  When I asked him to make a scary face for a picture he just smiled really big.

It was then that I noticed he needs a haircut.

At most I would say it was an interesting loop, not worth $3 per person by any stretch of the imagination so I’m really happy we got to see it for free.

And then there was this.

The sign said Danger High Voltage and the kids were refusing to touch the fence and absolutely did not believe me when I told them that it was just part of the whole setup. Kait said, Well, why don’t you touch it then?, because I guess it’s okay if mom dies by electric shock.  So I did without even the slightest concern in the back of my mind that it might be the last thing I ever do and will anybody remember to take the pork butt out of the crock pot?

So then after I touched the fence and proved that it was, in fact, all for show I was all like, See, and the kid were all like, Oh, and Kait had this idea that all of them should act as though they were being shocked and I should take a picture of them only nobody really did it and that was weird.

Then we realized it was hot so we walked the Australian loop, which consisted of a few wallabies, a handful of kangaroos, some birds, and a very stern zoo worker who appeared to be in charge of guarding rocks. Then we came home. And nobody fell into the fountain or anything. It was a good day.

Ben is 6. And the boy is wicked smart.

Ben is observant and calm.  Not hyper or silly. Okay, he’s six, he’s a little silly. But he’s more serious than most kids I know.  

We call Ben Jeep because he is always dirty. He cleans well in the shower just like all the other kids but it would seem that the boy has dirt in his pores because its only a matter of minutes before he starts to appear dingy again, even when all he’s doing is sitting on the couch in his Sunday best waiting to go to church.
In our house Sunday best is whatever shirt has the most buttons. Preferably something clean but really as long as it doesn’t stink…

There are a lot of boys in this house.

…just outside my back door.

The other half of them are outside the front door.

This morning we went to the zoo. We have a season pass that paid for itself in just one visit and I think that is pretty awesome because it’s really difficult to find fun for a family of ten that is affordable. The zoo is great. I think my favorite thing there is the bird loop.

My phone liked the bird loop too and I was able to get some really nice pictures. The duck below actually posed for me when I held the camera up in front of him. Or her. I was within a foot of the pretty bird.

And they’ve just opened the stingray bay. We touched stingrays who seemed to really enjoy the attention. Jesse had his hands in the water but it didn’t appear he had any idea what was going on so he just splashed the water around and giggled like it was the best thing ever.

What is so cool about the zoo is the free water park. 
Cool. Water Park. Ha. Ha. Ha.
It’s small, but the kids love it.

And I’m serious when I say that nothing of note happened.  And we went earlier in the day so it wasn’t even too hot. It was just a nice, uneventful trip.
Except that Kait got stung by a bee.