Five Days!

Five days until the Great Summer Adventure of 2015 begins! Tinkerbelle wraps up school this week, then packs and flies out her next week...all very exciting!

I'm pretty fired up. I still recognize that this could end really badly in a lot of ways, but I'm just really looking forward to it. It will be great to have that much time with her, great for the girls to spend that much time with their "other" Aunt and, as I've mentioned, it sounds like it will be a really welcome break for both her and her Mom.

I don't actually have a ton of "plans" for the summer. She'll be working pretty much every weekday, and coming to the beach with us just about every weekend. She is going to inherit Munchkin's regular Thursday dinner date slot, which will ensure that I get a regular chance to sit down with her without any other distractions and talk about how everything is going. I have a couple of other things planned for her first week and a half here, too - a baseball game, an ice cream festival (more or less!) and a free concert - but I don't really anticipate having to keep her that busy.

I anticipate that she will make friends through work, and she will definitely have some time to be on her own and hang out...I'll probably give her a curfew, but I love the idea of her having some free time with kids her own age until then. At some point she is going to want to stay home for a weekend, which I probably won't sign off on, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it!

Other than that, we're just gonna play it by ear! The weather has finally warmed, Munchkin is back from Europe (probably for not the last time this summer) and settled in at the beach, and I am really excited for summer! The girls have their pre-school graduation next Friday, although they will stay where they are until the end of August before school starts. That makes me feel pretty old:-). They've loved their day care and so have I...I'll be a little sad to see them go.

Nothing major beyond that! Girls are getting big, work is work, The Boy is still my favorite:-). No news is good news, I guess!

Planning

Munchkin is out of the country for about a week and a half (friends in London, friends and the boy in Paris...ho hum) which meant that she was unavailable for our regular Thursday night date last night. Big Sis took that opportunity to schedule a meeting with Smoking Hot Roommate and I to begin planning what will be the single greatest party in the history of mankind: Munchkin's 21st birthday.

No, I am not kidding. We legitimately began the planning process last night. Her birthday is April 3, 2016.

There is absolutely no way that this ends up being anything short of preposterously out of hand.

Roar!

Big outing on Saturday...to the zoo to see the two new lions!

To back up, LK is absolutely obsessed with lions. And sharks, specifically because they eat other animals (don't ask...) Her favorite book is The Tawny Scrawny Lion, and she owns at least a half dozen stuffed lions of various sizes (and OMG...read the reviews for that book, they are hilarious. It's about talking animals who wear clothes, and these people are concerned because it is geographically implausible?)

Her favorite animal at the Franklin Park Zoo was always Christopher the lion, who commanded an exhibit at the center and highest point of the zoo. From there, he used to periodically stand atop his rock and roar loud enough for everyone to hear for a mile or two around the zoo...almost as if he had an internal alarm to remind everyone, every couple of hours, that he was in fact the lion. And you were not.

Christopher died in March...he was the oldest lion in North America and they had to put him to sleep because he had all sorts of old-lion maladies. I read about this in the Globe, but I never told her because I was kind of hoping that I didn't have to...she reacted fine when their favorite dog died two years ago, but I'd rather not explain that the lion went to heaven.

Wasn't I happy then, to hear that the zoo was getting TWO new male lions in early May! Not only do I not have to explain to her that the lion died, but the whole thing just got doubly good! Sadly, the lions are here because one of them killed his prospective mate in Dallas, and their interest in a breeding program led them to seek a new home for these lions and a new, hopefully less murderous, male lion to start their program. But, Boston had the facilities to take them and a gaping hole in their zoo landscape, Dallas had a need for a new home for their lions, and everything worked out for the best...

The lions made their debut on Friday, so we took the girls to see them on Saturday, and oh boy were they excited! From the time we got out of the car, LK was on a mission...she didn't want to see the baby gorilla, she didn't want to see the zebras or the giraffes or the flamingos. She stopped at the Ostrich for a minute, but mostly she was totally focused on seeing her two new friends! She spent no less than half an hour walking from one vantage point to another, looking at them, smiling, and holding up her stuffed animals for them to see. For their parts, the lions laid in the shade and periodically lifted their heads;-)

After that she was content to finally see the other animals, ride a camel, play at the playground and enjoy the day. All in all, a mighty successful trip to the zoo!

(Side note: the mother gorilla just gave birth to her third or fourth baby, which I am guessing is unusual for an animal in captivity. She is so comfortable with the zookeepers now that she allowed them to give her an ultrasound when she was pregnant...which I find pretty remarkable.)