saturday is a special day

Saturdays are great at our house -- N is home all day (after usually being gone most of the week), we don't have any appointments, and we usually go on a small outing together. These outings can be categorized: Mommy's-fried-so-Daddy-takes-the-kids-out outings, lots-of-errands-let's-split-the-kids outings, or here-we-are-together outings. Occasionally, one of us will go out alone to get something done, but one family member doth not a family outing make, so those are not included.

Seriously, though, our decision of what to do for the day often has more to do with how I'm feeling than what we really need to get done. Today is a perfect example. I was feeling a little stressed, so I asked if my darling husband could take my darling children out for a little bit. Instead, said darling husband took them to the zoo all morning. As a result, I was feeling much better later and we managed a quite pleasant dinner out with the whole family. What all of that means is that the grocery shopping, our normal Saturday morning whole family outing, didn't get done, so darling husband is now out shopping. (Don't feel too bad for him -- he slept in and took a nap today, too.)

The kids had a great time at the zoo. Apparently, they didn't see a ton of animals, but they spent a lot of time at the playground (yes, we have playgrounds in our zoo :) and went to the petting zoo. Everyone said that V had a fantastic time at the petting zoo. She hugged the goat, she kissed the goat, she loved the goat. She's really into giving kisses right now, which is so, so cute, but only because they're nice dry kisses. ;-) M reported that the hippos were eating hippo lunch (hay) and that the elephant house smelled ... ... ... ... ... ... ... bad. He didn't seem to have enough words to describe it, so he just gave us the dramatic pause.

The extra time for the kids with just Daddy is very important at our house, especially for M, our 4-year-old. Because Daddy is gone a fair bit, Mommy does the routine kid jobs herself most of the time (feeding bathing, bedtime) and M tends to protest when Daddy tries to help. He really throws fits when Daddy punishes him. But all of this does seem to get better when M gets more private time with his dad. V loves her Daddy and is always happy to hang out with him, preferably with a book.

The bath pictures are about 6 months old, but I just came across them and thought they were cute. Our camera just took a spill and is broken, so no new pictures for a little while. Hope they can fix it!