Sunday Safari Visit

We visited the Lazy 5 Ranch again on Sunday. The experience was yet another reminder of what it is like to try to go anywhere with a newborn. We had gone to the monthly Latin Mass the night before, so we had all of Sunday free and started out having breakfast at a nearby diner. Afterward, we thought we'd spontaneously go to the "safari" (John calls it "fari!") and we wouldn't even have to get the kids out of the car--all we had to do was "stop by the house." (You know you're in trouble when you try to do anything spontaneously with a newborn.) We pulled up, I hopped out and ran inside to get a stash of diapers and snacks. Then I went back to the van and Chris ran in to do a couple of quick chores. Then we would be ready to go . . . except that Mary woke up to nurse, so I nursed her in the van in the driveway, still determined not to go inside. As long as she was awake, I changed her diaper in my lap. After nursing and getting a dry diaper, she had a poopy diaper blow-out, ruining her whole outfit, so I was forced to go inside and get her fully changed. Ultimately, we sat in the van in the driveway for an hour doing all this mumbo jumbo because we were so determined not to haul both kids back inside the house! Then Mary woke up and screamed bloody murder several times on the drive, so we pulled over at least twice to nurse and calm her, which made the normally 50-minute drive nearly twice as long.

We try never to give John too much advanced notice of fun things to minimize how long we have to listen to whining and begging. We did not tell him where we were going until we were rounding the corner to the safari. We gave him the great news, then pulled into the driveway and read the big CLOSED sign. Oh no! The safari wasn't going to open for another half hour, so we went to eat lunch while we waited, and let me assure you that we had no fun over lunch while listening to an incessant litany of weeping and gnashing of teeth over "fari!" by the toddler who can't understand what waiting half an hour means.
The inner part of the ranch is for cars only so nobody is vulnerable to potentially dangerous animals. The road opens to the parking lot and the animals are kept inside by one of those grates they won't cross. John made me very nervous by standing on one side of the gate with animals on the other side. Chris was filming and I was thinking, "Do those grates always work?"

Video of John chasing peacocks: