The National Zoo

Our first trip to the National Zoo in D.C. was a disaster. Rosie was kind enough to take Alyssa for the day and I can't imagine what we would have done if we would have had her along with our crew of 5 and under. We drove to the Metro station stopping once so children could pee (30 min. total). Through a series of unfortunate events that I won't trouble you with, it took over an hour and a half for us to get to our destination Metro stop when it should have taken 30 min, 45 at the most. We finally got out of the station and we had to walk 3 blocks to the zoo. Normally that would be fine but it was 3 blocks straight up hill with Eric and I pushing 2 kids each in strollers and Halaulani lugging one in her tummy. Needless to say, when we finally got to the zoo 2 hours later we were all exhausted and I found myself debating in my mind if going forward with our zoo excursion was even worth it and weighing out the guaranteed meltdowns that all 4 kids would have if we just went home and took a nap. It is a beautiful zoo, I will give it that. Lots of trees and rare animals. One problem. The zoo is a giant hill. The further down you go the more work you are going to have to do to leave- an ingenious ploy to get customers to stay and spend their money on grossly overpriced food...I just know there are people at the bottom of that hill who went down too far and couldn't get out, and now they are probably in some cage labeled 'Neanderthal'...well, that wasn't gonna happen to us! We saw the main attractions, the Panda Bears in particular were unique and beautiful. We tried to take a picture of the kids on the statue of the ape but not one of them was cooperating. When I showed Nathan the picture his comment was 'If that thing suddenly came to life it would scare the crap outta them.' The thought actually gave us a good laugh. In the end the trip to the zoo took all day and we were exhausted when we got home. The children were actually really good all things considered. On the bright side if we ever have visitors who want to check out the National Zoo I will know I should just drop them off for the day...and pray they make it out!