A little stay-cation

With young kids, sometimes a vacation is not a vacation at all.  So this year we decided that we wouldn’t go anywhere for the summer, but that Stephen would take some days off work and do some fun family activities (and reserve a bunch of days to go out of town for Christmas).  July 18th was one of the days Stephen took off.  It ended up being during the long heat spell we had here in Minnesota, but we went to the zoo anyway.  After all, if it got too hot we could go to the splash pad. 

We started out seeing the new penguin exhibit.  It’s indoors, so that’ll be fun to see again during the winter months as well.

 

After watching the penguins for a while it got close to when the Bird Show would start.  Stephen’s never been to the zoo during the summer, so he’s never seen the show and it’s quite cute (even though every time has the same jokes…)  On the way to the amphitheater we stopped by the tiger exhibit, but couldn’t find any.  We had to settle for the iron statues instead.

  

Clara in the amphitheater

Sitting around got us quite hot so we ended up playing in the splash pad until it was time for the dolphin ‘training session’  The girls loved getting wet.

 

 

A picture with Sam-I-am

The dolphin show as fun, but we didn’t bring our big camera and so didn’t try to take any pictures.  Clara was climbing all over the stairs and was overly cranky since it was past her naptime.  We called it a day and headed home for lunch and naps.

After naps we went to the pool to get a better fill of swimming in.  We went up to the Maple Grove Lifetime Fitness since I hadn’t been to their outdoor pool.  With a slide, a lazy river, and a pretty large area of 0° entry the girls had plenty of room to play.  We ate dinner at Noodle & Co. and the girls crashed pretty well afterwards.

It was a nice stay-cation, and didn’t cost a dime (other than gas and dinner) since we’re members of both the Zoo and Lifetime, and best of all the girls went to sleep since they were in their own beds.