here and there

Sunday morning, my dad and brother came over to help Mike with the swing set (!) we got for the boys for Liam's birthday. Mike has been working on it in the garage for a couple of weeks, and got to the point where the smaller structures that he had built needed to be hauled out to the yard and assembled there. Since the swing set is a surprise, that left me with the important job of taking the boys somewhere else for the day so they wouldn't get curious about the proceedings. We chose to head out to Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend. We haven't been there yet, despite having purchased a membership, so it was the perfect time to go. And luckily Klaudia was available to join us, so the boys got an added treat.




It's a small zoo, but it was still pretty impressive. Probably my favorite part was their Australia section. It was open! I mean, obviously there was fencing around the borders, otherwise the kangaroos and wallabies might vacate the premises, but within those boundaries, it was just open lawn. There was a path through the middle for visitors to walk on (and not stray from), but theoretically, the kangaroo or wallaby could just walk right on over, if it wanted to. It was weird to be so close to exotic animals with nothing in between us but a few feet of grass.




We also went into the brand-new butterfly house. Klaudia was excited to see the butterflies, while Max was pretty indifferent, and Liam was downright freaked out by the whole thing. He was convinced that the butterflies would try to get him and eat him. By the time we finished in the humid, foggy butterfly house, he was feeling a little bit better, but was still ready to leave the zoo.


We made one last stop on the way out so the boys and Klaudia could admire a giant turtle, and then we were on our way to enjoy the rest of our day. We had lunch at Chipotle (a first for Klaudia!), then hit the bookstore before taking Klaudia to cheerleading practice and going to visit my mom. By the time we got home, my dad and J were gone, and the the swing set was up. Mike still has a few last things to do on it, but basically, now we just have to worry about hiding a very large structure from a very inquisitive (almost) four-year-old for the rest of the week. It's going to be, as Liam says, very tricky.