A Double-Shot Of Saturday Adventures.

Today's rainy and we're going to move the Saturday Adventure for this week to tomorrow, which gives me time to get caught up on the last two Saturday Adventures:

Adventure One: Helping Oldest Move To Her New Apartment.

Two Saturdays ago, the jobs of the day were to help Oldest move, and to pick up some supplies to transfer the two remaining cats, Scruffy and Stormy, to Oldest's apartment (since we no longer wanted cats around, for cat-scented reasons.) I began the day by simply driving the truck; one benefit of nearly dying all the time is that I get a free pass on "Carrying Stuff Into People's Houses." So while Oldest and The Boy and some of Oldest's friends, including the Never-Do-Well Boyfriend, moved her, I sat in the truck and read the latest issue of The New Yorker.

I wasn't totally unhelpful; I also guarded Oldest's purse, and, as part of my official duties, I also was tasked with "making sure that Oldest didn't throw away Sweetie's storage bins." I failed miserably at that job -- I forgot to watch them, and Oldest threw them out.

But, undaunted, later that day when the moving was done (she really didn't have that much stuff) I did the second part, which was to bravely take Mr Bunches and Mr F to Wal-Mart to get some new cat stuff for Oldest to use in her apartment, and also to try to find "hand sanitizer," which I was asked to buy for Oldest, the theory apparently being "He's going to the store, so he should buy me some stuff that otherwise I'd have to get myself." I tried to look at it as a housewarming present.

Most of the day, I didn't have my camera with me, but I did take it on the Wal-Mart trip (what's more scenic than a Wal-Mart?) and I did get some shots of the trip over and the actual apartment...

Here's Mr F, waiting for me to look through all the bins to see where the hand sanitizer is, and hoping he can convince me to buy him the Fisher Price barn he's holding. (He didn't convince me, because (a) it was $25 and (b) they already have one at home.)


Here's Mr Bunches, killing time while I let Mr F pick out a different toy:


Then, Sweetie and the Babies! and I took all the stuff, and Scruffy and Stormy, over to Oldest's house. Sweetie snapped this shot:


At Oldest's, we picked up The Boy (who was helping her unpack), looked around, hooked up the DVD player and headed on out. Nobody was this blurry in real life, though:



Then, this week, it was on to Adventure: The Big Playground At The Zoo!

We chose this for the Babies!' big birthday celebration, in lieu of a party. Mr F and Mr Bunches turned 4 last week, and we figured a party is no good because they don't like parties and we don't like parties, and all the relatives that we know who do like parties can just go have a party themselves, because we were going to the zoo.

This was the second time we went to the zoo. While I don't like to repeat adventures, the zoo is always worth a trip there, but more importantly, the first time we'd gone, the big playground had been closed. (What closes a playground? It's not like the slides weren't operating. So far as I know, gravity had been turned on that day.)

We didn't just go to the playground: With The Boy and Middle (Oldest was working) we fed the goats:


We fed the goats very hesitantly, that is. And Mr F didn't feed them at all; I had to hold him while he hid behind my head. Mr F is not a fan of goats.


We also toured the monkey house, saw the lions up close, struggled to keep Mr F from climbing into swim with the sea lion (he doesn't like goats, but sea lions, he's okay with) and finally made it to the Big Playground, home to a net bridge:


That crosses from the little slides to the Big Slide, a two-story high slide that's only accessible through a net-like maze. Mr Bunches ran up there, and while I tried to follow him, he got up into the highest slide, went down, and came back around; that picture above is him coming up for a second-go-round, while I tried to find him the first time. (He snuck up on me.)

Meanwhile, The Boy chaperoned Mr F, who doesn't like slides any more than he likes goats. We traded, and I let The Boy tried to keep tabs on a hyper Mr Bunches, while I walked Mr F around the more-his-pace children's zoo enclosures, where we thrilled to the sights of a sleepy porcupine, some red pandas, and a cockatoo, and where I snapped this arty self-portrait:


Eventually, I got Mr F to go down the tube slide with me, going once together, and then once by himself:


And then together again. He seemed to like it, in a nonchalant sort of way:



The day finished up with dinner at McDonald's, and the playland, and watching their new movie, ET in their room.