Jonnie's Birthday trip to the National Zoo

Birthday ice cream and popsicles (ice lollies for our English friends) at the zoo

I'm obviously pretty delinquent in posting to our blog. Sorry! I'll backtrack the best I can - on Sept 11th, Jonnie's 5th birthday, we took the metro into Washington DC and went to the National Zoo. We met our dear friend Myca Wehrli at one of the metro stations and continued on with her. This was a bittersweet outing with Myca - she and Andrew recently moved and so it was our last outing with her for awhile. We all miss her dearly. The river otters were the favorites of 3 out of 4 of the children. They could have watched them for hours. What about the 4th? It was the snapping turtle of which said child could have watched all day. Guess who? Yes, our Sethy :-) He has a quirky way of leaving his S's off of words if they begin with an "s" then a consonant - so to be most accurate his favorite was the 'napping turtle. If the "s" is followed by a vowel he pronounces it perfectly so he can thankfully say his name just fine. If I say 'napping turtle, however, he quickly corrects me by telling me "no, mama, its not a 'napping turtle its a 'napping turtle". So, he hears how it is supposed to be pronounced - he just can't quite say what he hears yet :-) I digress...

This was a Faith weather day! It was a cool, rainy day and she was skipping instead of walking most of the day. She will quickly tell you that the hot weather does not agree with her - she is much more suited for England's weather!

We spent a full day skipping through the rain to see the animals outdoors and then ducking inside to the reptile, small mammal, invertebrate, etc. houses when the drizzle turned to more of a downpour.

A great shot of the octopus - its hard to get perspective of scale from the photo (should have held Seth up next to it) , but it is quite large.

Yes, Jonnie, that baby elephant really does weigh 4,454 pounds!"

It seemed that on this Tuesday they had opened the zoo to only Jonnie's birthday "entourage" as we were often the only ones in the various houses. It was a very pleasant, unhurried day for all of us.

We stayed until late afternoon and then Scotty met us as we were making our walking trek back to the metro station. Seth fell asleep soon after we were on the metro - on Scotty's lap. A few minutes from the Springfield Station (about 2o minutes from home when no rush hour traffic) where we parked our van, it became quite obvious to Scotty that Seth did not have a naptime pull up on! We were planning on meeting friends for supper in Springfield, so, after we retrieved our van, we parked at the nearest Target and the girls and I went in and shopped the clearance racks for a pair of shorts and flip flops for Scotty and a pair of shorts for Seth! Scotty wore his t-shirt that was under his uniform with his new shorts, but wearing his no longer dry uniform pants was out of the question!
The calm before the "storm" :-)

After getting off the metro and the unscheduled trip to Target, we then met our friends Rob and Shauna Pittman and their children at the Silver Diner for Tuesday Kids' Night to top off Jonnie's special birthday outing and remember the lessons and heroes from Sept 11th. The local fire department brought two of their trucks and one of their ambulances for the children to climb on and explore. Two of the firemen helping out had responded to the Pentagon with the fire department in 2001. The others joined after 9/11. We thanked them all and I swallowed a lump in my throat each time I did.

Seth, in his cool new Washington Nationals baseball shorts, watching the firemen raise the tall ladder

Jonnie's not so sure of all the attention lavished on him by the wait staff as they sing him Happy Birthday! The Pittmans' son David watches with glee.

Happy Birthday to our precious son Jonathan. What a delight he has been in our lives.