It's a Zoo Out There!

Its been so nice to not have any deadlines or schedules to follow.  Emma was up early, but she went back to sleep and Ben didn't get up until 8:00 (7:00 BC time). We watched the rest of the Harry Potter movie while we had breakfast and then got ready for the day. 

We went to the Oregon Zoo in Portland. It was definitely a zoo...in more ways than one!  We had a hard time finding parking to start off with. When we finally found a parking space we had to walk quite a ways to get to the zoo entrance. The kids were intrigued with an old locomotive that was in display and we stopped for them to explore for a while. 

There were so many people at the zoo that at times it was hard to see the exhibits. We had to be a bit patient, but the kids did great. We had one accident when Emma was bouncing along and ended up falling and scraping her elbow. Thankfully a Dora bandaid helped her feel better. 

I think the funniest part was when the kids started making monkey sounds at the monkeys and everyone around us started laughing. What a couple of little monkeys we have!

By the time we decided to call it a day, the kids were exhausted and didn't want to walk anymore. We managed to get them to walk to the front entrance of the zoo and then we carried them to the truck. It was almost 30 degrees and by the time we got there, I was ready to crash!

After getting out of the zoo, we stopped to see the Portland Temple. It is beautiful and huge!  The kids loved the visitors center, especially the interactive screens that they could 'color' a picture of a temple. 

Both kids finally fell asleep on the way back to the trailer. Emma stayed asleep but Ben woke up. Lennard and I didn't really feel like anything that we had in the trailer for dinner, so after an hour or so, we finally decided to drive in to Salem to try out a buffet place there. It was only a twenty minute drive. When we got there it was so crazy busy, that we decided to 'settle' for the Olive Garden instead that we'd happened to see on our drive in. So good!  Unfortunately, by then the kids were way overtired and it was past their bedtime. (We're such good parents...)  They didn't eat lots, but enough to be okay so that as soon as we got back to the trailer they were put in pajamas and sent to bed. It didn't take us that long to head that way too. It's been a lot of walking in hot weather today.