The Sweetest Place on Earth

Monday we took my car to the garage, and the dealership fixed it...to the tune of over $400. Ugh!!! But, at least I have wheels that work once again. On Tuesday, Aunt Missy came to our house to watch the boys while I went to my follow-up doctor's appointment for my legs. Unfortunately, the surgeon said we'll need to take out the protruding veins in both legs, but we have to wait until the inflammation goes completely away, so we can't schedule it until November. The doctor was half an hour late to my appointment, which isn't like him. I found out as I was leaving that he was called in to perform surgery on the victims of the shootout in Lancaster that morning, one of which was a Dart employee. As we later learned, both died. I was joking with Shawn (since we really like this surgeon) and said "hmm...if both guys died...maybe I should question..." and Shawn quipped right in "yes, but he's a heck of a nice guy" (which is what I always say). We both rolled, but I think maybe you had to be there to think it was funny now that I'm typing it...haaa!!! That afternoon Shawn had a dentist appointment, and afterward I went to Bible study, which was on how to be a good 'fellow traveler' in this journey of life. It was good, I thought. On Wednesday, we were supposed to pick up Aunt Erica in the morning. She woke up just before 11 am since her plane had landed late the night before, so we got her later than we were expecting. We went to Target to do a little shopping and then Isaac's for lunch before putting the boys to bed for their naps. She stayed at our house while they slept and checked her email/facebook while I took a jog that afternoon. It was heavenly! Afterward we grabbed her rental car (what an experience!) and then got Papa John's pizza for dinner and hung out. She spent the night with us that evening.

Thursday morning we drove to Hershy in Aunt Erica's little red sporty rental car. Joshua was SO excited when we told him we were going to go see some animals. We borrowed Grandma's GPS (thanks, Mom!) and typed in the address to Zoo America and away we went! It didn't take long to get to from our house, and the weather was perfect. While it had rained in the morning, it was nice and sunny by the time we got there (thank you, Jesus!). I think Zoo America was the perfect size for young ones. Children two and under were free, which worked out perfectly for us. There weren't a ton of animals, so we were there only an hour or two, which was about the max for the kids' attention spans. I was expecting lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) but there weren't a lot of exciting things. We saw the entire place and saw a wide variety of birds, bobcats, snakes, alligators, wolves, deer, bears, porcupines, turtles, ducks, buffalo...and I'm thinking that was about it. There may have been a few others I'm forgetting now. Here's our group of animals below.Below are the wolves, behind the fence. The one in the bathtub, cooling himself off, is two years old, just like our Bean!Not sure the age of this guy, though...Here's Erica & the boys...
And me and my little lovies...This is an elk with gi-mammoth horns.Here are the boys looking at the 'stinky' dear.Here's the bear exhibit, which was my personal favorite.And two more bears...oh wait, that's me trying to take a picture of us with an unsteady hand.Here's the Bean in front of the bear (which you can see in the background behind the glass with the fish). We parked the stroller then let Caleb out to walk for awhile. I must say, this place was VERY stroller friendly.Both boys enjoyed looking into the water to see the fish.Pretty soon the boys were getting hungry, and after giving them a small snack at the park, we decided to head to lunch at Friendly's near there (thanks to the GPS!).After lunch - and the boys thoroughly enjoyed their icecream that came with their meal - we went to Hershey's Chocolate World. Parking was free, the chocolate world ride was free, and the boys were happy. This isn't a big enough event to do by itself (it took less than half an hour, I think) but it was great combined with another outing. We had also talked about doing the Hershey's Children's Garden, but it was all but 2 pm until we left, and we didn't want to push the boys much later with their typical nap schedules being 1-3 pm. Both boys passed out in the car on the way home (although Caleb did wake up then to get a drink). I was a little nervous that Joshua wouldn't like the ride part of the tour, but he did well sitting on Aunt Erica's lap while I held Caleb. We learned all about how chocolate was made, and I think the favorite part for the boys was the singing cows who told us it was all about milk. While I've done the tour before when I was in high school, I did not remember the process of making chocolate being so involved!!! Here we are on the moving ride (my camera doesn't do well if there's movement). The actual picture taken by Hershey of the four of us was actually really good...all of us were looking and smiling, etc. but they wanted a lot of money for it, which wasn't really worth it to us.The chocolate tour was interesting for us and entertaining for the kids. And we all got chocolate afterward, which the boys enjoyed (and so did their shirts). We stopped to wipe them down and explore the gift shop before leaving for the day. All in all, it was a fun day in Hershey, the sweetest place on earth (as they say on all their billboards and commercials...).