Oki Zoo

At the end of February, Spencer flew back to "the States" (I always feel kind of English referring to the US as "the States"- kind of like "the colonies" or something) to do an Endo course, which left me flying solo with the kiddos for a week. Shortly after he left for the airport, the kids and I hopped in the car and went to the zoo.

We hadn't ever been on a Saturday before, so it was fun to learn that we could do some new fun stuff that they don't offer on weekdays. The first was a petting zoo. We bought a few little 100 yen cups of animal food a Sydney found a guinea pig to feed.

A nice Okinawan lady gave Shawn this balloon, so he was content to hold it for a while and just watch Sydney feed the guinea pig.

When the novelty of holding the balloon wore off, I wheeled Shawn's stroller over to another guinea pig so he could feed it.

He thought it was pretty silly.

Sydney LOVED holding these sweet little baby chicks. They were so cute!

We also got to feed an elephant, but I didn't get any pictures of it. Sadly, we paid 200 yen per cup of food for the elephant, and it wasn't that much more food then what we got for the tiny little guinea pigs. After giving our elephant in Thailand two huge baskets of food, feeding the zoo elephant 1/4 of a banana and a few apple slices seemed pretty darn mean. That animal was hungry!

At the end of the day, Sydney chose to spend money to ride these lame rides instead of feeding the fish.

Her meltdown afterward about still wanting to feed the fish was our cue that it was time to go. We had a great time though and it made day 1 of no Spencer pass pretty painlessly. I had honestly anticipated that it would be really painful week for me, but I actually had a really great time with my little buddies. I just tried to plan some sort of outing to fill the morning each day, and that helped the time pass much more quickly.

I've found that my frustrations in marriage/parenting are all about my expectations. If I expect him to be home by 4:30pm (totally spoiled, I know), and he's not home by 5pm, then I'm like, "Where the heck are you? I need you to come home so I can make dinner!" But if I know that he's gone and it's just me, then I'm good. And it helps that dinner for a 4 year old and 18 month old can be pretty simple.

Spencer attempted to take time off to see his family after his course was done, but working out the flights was getting to be a big hassle so he just cancelled his leave and came home early. Kind of lame to do when he was so close to them, but it was nice to have him home. Another bonus was that he got back in time to attend our special Sunday meeting with Elder Nelson, which he would have missed.