Potter Park Zoo with the Millers

So, we spent a week in Michigan in October during Morgan's very first school break. We kicked off the week with an overnight visit to our cousins' rounded out with a trip to the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing with them. They did an excellent job summing up our time at the zoo together over on their blog so I won't retell the whole zoo story.

While the zoo was a complete adventure (Baboons eating poop! A hail storm!), I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with them the night before the zoo trip. It is nice to just relax and enjoy simple times with family and have the chance to share in their day-to-day activities. We sometimes miss that kind of stuff since we live too far away to participate regularly.

We arrived at their house earlier than we had originally planned - just after naptime. We all went outside shortly after we got there and spent some time swinging, playing catch and catching up. Then we were able to go with our cousins to their swim lessons and enjoy a yummy Mexican restaurant with them afterward. I think it's worth noting that the kids all ordered hot dogs ... at a Mexican restaurant ... and Allie claimed 1 of the 2 cups of nacho cheese the waitress brought out with the tortilla chips and proceeded to eat the entire cup by herself. I've never seen someone so tiny eat so much cheese!

After getting back to their house and putting the kids to bed, the adults stayed up to play a game of Friends Scene-It. We decided to play Millers vs. Coons instead of every man for himself (mostly because Lucas was certain he would lose if he wasn't on a team). Jeff and I were pretty psyched because we love Friends and we figured we could beat Kim and Lucas. We were wrong! It was a pretty close game, but Kim and Lucas were tough competitors! Lucas contributed much more than we expected (wait, was that all part of their plan?) and Kim was lightning fast at answering the All Play questions where the first one to shout it out wins the point. You'd think we'd know by now that beating Millers is not our strong suit!


Here are some of the photos we took during our visit:

Cousins having a great time together!



Girls getting their groove on at the piano.




I was kind of fascinated with the tigers. Here's one sleeping through all of the noise we were making.



My (sorry) attempt to get a photo of everyone while they watched the penguins.



I realized Kim and I were not going to be in any pictures so Jeff took two pictures of us on this bridge. Kim looks best in this shot. 



Morgan and Ryan in the playhouse.

Thank you, Miller Cousins, for always welcoming us into your home. We hope we can repay the hospitality someday!