Zoo day

Yesterday was just a sort of randomly really good day. We didn't have things totally planned out but by the end of the day Connor exclaimed, "Today was the best day ever!" Jamie wasn't really willing to go that far, but he also didn't argue.

It started with Jamie going to a cello workshop in the morning.  It was a very fun, interactive teacher and Jamie really actually seems to enjoy playing cello. He also got a little more interested in terms like "Forte" and "Pianissimo" when he realized that they were Italian in origin.

When we got back it was decided that we would go to the zoo with some friends. Jamie has been a little anti-zoo for the last few...well, years really now that I think about. Why that is I don't know. Connor, however, you can well imagine loves it. As he is fond of saying sometimes, "You just don't know how much I love animals." They've got a new dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, which was a winner even with Jamie. One of them squirted water at the boys and while it is no longer so excruciatingly hot here, it's warm enough to make it feel pretty good and the boys just squealed every time they got sprayed.

They've also just put a new water park in at the zoo so we headed there next where the boys got really soaked. While the big boys were there I broke off with Connor to ride the carousel and he took this wonderful unaffected delight in the experience. He is very very into cheetahs these days so he joy at riding the cheetah on the carousel was unbounded. Then as we were coming home two pleasing things happened. First it began to rain rather hard, so we all got wet yet again, and we announced that they could play video games when we got home. Both of the boys have sort of adopted my fondness for rainy days so it was at this point that Connor made his announcement. 

After the rain and the video games stopped we managed to get them to work in the yard. It's a delicate thing getting them outside. It needs to be packaged the right way, but once they get into they can be very happy. In this case, Sarah motivated Jamie to do some cleaning up out there as a part of his chores for his allowance. He started sweeping up leaves and putting them into the compost and managed to keep that up for a sold 30-40 minutes. So all in all a very routine, very fun Saturday.