The Failed Adventure

I was so proud of myself.

It was such a good idea.

Instead of staying home with the kids for eight hours, I would take them out in search of an adventure. After all, I had last weeks extremely successful trip to the arboretum{or "arberdedum" as Molly says it}under my belt so I could do anything. Even if it meant driving to a town I'd never heard of before, as long as it cost about $0 and I had a GPS I could do anything.

They say pride comes before the fall and boy, did I fall.

After spending 35 minutes looking for adventure via the internet,20 minutes making a picnic lunch, and another 18 spent solving civil disagreements between blood relatives{which is just the politically correct way of saying Zachary and Molly were arguing and I had to break it up}we buckled into the car and speed off.

The destination in question was advertised as a "free indoor/outdoor petting zoo" where you could "pick-up some fresh eggs from their free-running chickens." Then we could "top off our visit with a selection from the old fashioned candy counter." I thought it sounded just lovely.

We were the only guests at the farm when we arrived. And the only guests during our stay. And the only guests when we left. I got the feeling it wasn't a very happenin' place. We walked around back and saw a couple cute animals behind a fence. A young goat (obviously a boy, judging by the way he was behaving)stuck his nose at us through the hole in the fence and just before we reached out to pet him, I realized we should double check that it was ok to pet him. We went into the store and it was completely empty. For a minute I thought it might be an honor-system operation but then a teenage girl came around the corner. "Um,hi" I said. (I have such a gift when it comes to starting of conversations beautifully.) "Um, we just wanted to make sure it's ok to pet the animals before we do it." The girl didn't know but she did know how to yell for her manager. "LINDSAY!!!!". Two minutes later she was back with a report from Lindsay: "Um, you can't really pet the animals because we don't want you to get bitten or anything else like that." I thanked her, gathered my children and exited the store. Once outside it hit me. THIS IS A PETTING ZOO. WHY CAN'T WE PET THE ANIMALS? I wasn't the only one wondering this because both children looked up at me and said: "why can't we pet the animals?" I had no answer for them so we moved on to the chicken coop. At two stories and probably 40 windows long (I'm sorry, but I have no idea how many feet that would be if I even knew how to do a window-to-feet conversion), it was the largest coop I'd ever seen. Molly was just about to go through the door when I saw this sign and called her back out:

Enter at your own risk.

Risk of falling eggs.

It was at this point that we left the can't-pet-the-animals petting zoo and watch-it-or-those-fresh-eggs-will-fall-on-your-head free running chickens. We didn't even get any old fashioned candy.

I felt bad totally wasting the trip out to in the middle of nowhere so we attempted to find a nice park to eat our lunch. The GPS brought us right to...the middle of a housing development with no nice parks in sight. I wasn't about to eat lunch on someone's lawn so we just went home and ate in the back yard.

It was a sad, sad attempt at an adventure.

The day wasn't completely lost,though. After we recovering for our tragic experience, we played in the kiddie pool for hours laughing and screaming and generally being crazy. Zachary and I passed a little plastic fish back and forth between our toes 55 times without dropping it. That's the type of talent our family is made of.

So the moral of the story is this: don't try to be some really cool babysitter who thinks she has it all together. Because you probably don't. And also, look up some reviews before you waste almost two hours of your life seeking adventure.