Day 58 - Field Trip

The boys had the luxury of going to Maymont Park today with school. Part of the fun of Maymont is that there are a bunch of animals to look at.

The other fun part is that it's free.

So Ethan & Owen went and they even got to wear giant, laminated tags with their name and what school they go to printed neatly on the card.

I assume this is in case they get lost.

Apparently, you can just drop them in a mailbox and the USPS will deliver them to their rightful home.

According to both the boys and Mrs. Hickman (who sounded almost as excited as the boys) they saw owls (odd since they went during the day), vultures (odd since it's an animal that seems vaguely dangerous), bears and other animals...Owen told me later that they also saw a bunch of stinky pigs...

So, for perspective, think of the best zoo you can imagine and then think of the opposite...

This park/zoo is somewhere just a few notches above the opposite you just imagined.

After I scooped up all 3 from school we hustled over to Ethan's exercise class where he, once again, walked into the place like a presidential candidate waving at & hugging people...

I'm starting to think people skills cannot be taught.

With just Owen & Summer in tow we grabbed a few slices of pizza at Cozzoli's where the guy behind the counter asked me whose kids I stole.

I guess he noticed that the kids and I don't look anything alike so at least he's observant.

From there, I needed to swing by my Dad's place to let their dog Ruth out since they're down visiting Chapel Hill with my little sister. I'm not sure why they went since they've already been and she'll be in a dorm anyway...Plus, its not like they're going to live there...Unless they follow my sister which is a distinct possibility but thats a story for a different day on a different blog called http://www.letthekidgo.com/...

(Just kidding Dad & Stepmom)

So on the way, Owen was concerned and asked me this:

"Hey Victor...Is your Dad's dog going to be as hyper as Javi (my sister's annoying dog)?"

Now, Ruth is my favorite dog currently living. She's pretty cool and aside from getting over excited and peeing she's unbeleivably relaxed. Part of the reason I like her is because she likes to sit in a float in my dad's pool by herself and just kick it...But I also like her because she doesn't want to be bothered.

As a result, I have no problem telling Owen that Ruth will leave him alone. And, as I suspected, she did.

Oddly enough, Owen was 100% cool with Ruth once he figured out she wouldn't mess with him...and yet she wouldn't answer him when he spoke to her...So after a while I started paying attention to him and what he was calling her and realized he's calling her "Roof" and she just wasn't having it...so I told him to say it kind of like "juice" with an R and he'd get it...and he did.

Once we finished lunch, Owen really badly wanted to watch TV inside because, as he put it

"I've neva watched TV here before and I just want to"

Who the hell am I to argue with that?

So while they sat down to enjoy some TV until we go get Ethan, I'm in my Dad's study typing up this here post...

Back in a bit