Visitors

This weekend Justin's sister, Michelle, came to visit us with her family, which includes her husband Jason and our two nephews, Dylan and Blake. They are 5, soon to be 6, and 3. They arrived around 11:30 on Friday night and we didn't get to bed until around 1:30 am. Blake woke us up at 7 am with his calls of "Where's Allan? Where's Allan?" while he ran around the house. Thanks, pal.

Saturday was forecast to be in the 90's all day with a chance of thunderstorms after midnight, so we made plans to go to the zoo in the morning, come home to have lunch, and then go to a pool or waterpark. I was glad. For most of the month of July, it has been either very hot and humid or thunderstorming here. Nothing else. The hot is good, but I am pretty tired of TV shows getting inerupted constantly by the emergency alert system. Seriously, it seems like it happens all day, every day. I don't even get concerned when it happens.

Anyway, we went to the zoo around 10:30 before the heat of the day became elevated. The zoo here is pretty impressive for a town this size. They even have a "big cat" habitat with three tigers! It is the best part, in my opinion. There is a white Siberian tiger, an orange Bengal tiger, and this rare hybrid tiger that is a mix between the two!

That is the rare mixed tiger. I think it looks like Allan! They are so big up close. That tiger's paw was the size of Blake's head! This was Blake's favorite part. He also liked the chimpanzees. I liked the tigers and the parrots!

Can you see the parrots on the left? I had to coax Justin into taking this photo and he didn't give it much effort. That's why I think its so funny. Also, it is funny because my eyes look very strange and asymetrcial. Wierd.

I also liked the grizzly bears. There was one that just laid it the pond the whole time. It reminded of me of Wally the retriever in his pool!

Oh YIKES!

This was the sea otter habitat. It is hard to see the otter but it was a very entertaining animal! He or she would swim and twirl in front of the window and it even picked up a stone from the bottom and balanced it on his head! Very funny. I'm not sure who the kid in the window is.

Bison! That brown fuzzy thing by it's head is a baby! I wanted it to stand up so I could see how cute and also majestic and powerful it looked but it wouldn't! Alot of the animals were pretty lethargic because of the heat.

There is a nice playground within the zoo grounds. This tree was huge and perfect for climbing in, with low branches and a short trunk, so Dylan climbed up!

We left the zoo around 1:00 and as soon as we were out of the trees surrounding the zoo we saw a black mass of clouds approaching across the river. It looked like a thunderstorm! WAY before midnight! When we got home we prepared lunch and obsessed over the radar and soon it was thundering and lightening and downpouring. Now what were we supposed to do? Every fun activity we could think of required the outdoors. We called around to different pools (I remember how annoyed I was when I worked at pools and people would call to ask if we were open when there was rain and storms moving through but we had made plans already! We had two little bored little kids in a small house! We had to be sure!) We ended up watching TV and going to Sam's Club. OK, not so fun, but I got a big package of pre-sliced cheese so that was good.

When we were outside grilling supper it started raining again, and it continued to thunder and lightening and rain until after midnight when we went to bed (fortunately, the boys were in bed by 10:30 this time!) It seemed strange because for hours the thunder was right above us when it usually passes quickly. We looked at the radar and it the storm was materializing over Bismarck and growing as it moved East! Great, just great.

Dylan was getting bored because our house is pretty boring for children so I asked him if he wanted to draw. He said yes before I remembered that we don't have any markers, crayons, or colored pencils and our only paper is lined notebook paper or fancy, thick resume paper (gag, I wish I could have given that to him and never looked at it again!) I found some highlighters and some sharpie permanent markers and he was entertained for about 30 minutes. I asked for a picture of Allan and this is what he made. (It is drawn on the back of an old NDSU notepad I got for free at the alumni center.)

Very nice! He captured his striped legs! He also drew a picture of a house (not sure if it was supposed to be our house), which Blake later defaced by scribbling all over it with sharpies.

Yesterday morning Justin took care our irritating bunny rabbit problem. If you want more details you will have to ask him about it! It wasn't my idea! Hopefully it isn't too late for the carrots to recover from the damage already done!

Allan is really tired. He has been sleeping all day since they left. They boys liked him but they have a cat at home that they are accustomed to playing a bit rougher with, and Al's not used to that so he is pretty burned out from the visit! Overall, he was pretty tolerant.