Letting loose and having fun

Mommy here. And I will warn you this is will be a long post with lots of pictures.

About four years ago when I was expecting our first child, I was stuck at home on bedrest trying to prepare for my soon metamorphoses into motherhood. I was studying from great resources as any good woman would do. I was reading the magazine Parenting. In the magazine there was this wonderful article about the author and her young, single, sister who had few responsibilities and quite a bit of money. She talked about how this sister would come and be the center of her two small children's world. She was cool with her trendy clothes and wild car with a spider painted on the hood. She played video games all the time and fed them junk food behind their mother's back. She would stay up late with them, and would get up early when they body-slammed her at the crack of dawn. She was the epitome of carefree and fun. The author discussed how her sister, the coolest aunt ever, was such an important part of her children's life and even though rules went out the window while she was there, and there semi-organized home turned chaos with toys and food everywhere, they all learned an important lesson. There are times when one must let loose and just have fun.

At the time, this story took me back to my childhood and my young, single aunt with few responsibilities and a bit of money (she did get married when I was a year and half, but that only took out the single part of the equation). She drove a cool car, and did cool things, and most of all she was always taking her nieces and nephews with her. And one of us when young and having difficulty pronouncing her name came up with much easier to say version. Dine, and remember this was not to be prefaced with "aunt", because only old women were aunts and she was never getting old. I have so many memories with my Dine: little trips for happy meals and ice cream, sleepovers where we stayed up too late and ate way too much junk food, going to movie theaters, and weekends camp trips. In fact she is the one who taught me how to crack crab legs, how awesome is that! She is absolutely the coolest person ever. And very definitely taught me how to just let loose and have fun.

Now I am that mother, of  two small children, with a young, single sister with few responsibilities and bit of money who wears trendy clothes and drives a cool car. She also has nieces and nephews who could not get their tongue around the length of her name and came up with a much more suitable title of Tino (and again, don't you dare try to add an "aunt" to that, she will never be old). And this weekend I watched as my own children got to experience what it means to have such an aunt. In fact, nothing will ever describe it better than Michelle waking up Friday morning and seeing my sister sitting on the couch next to me and breaking into a smile that would make the Cheshire cat jealous and so filled with excitement that she literally started shaking. Yes, my sister is just that cool. And yes, I loved watching my children learn how to let loose and and just have fun.

And so, now on to Michelle and Ryker telling you our story of our weekend.

We woke up Friday morning to discover we had a visitor come in the night, and this visitor didn't sneak away like Santa or the Easter Bunny. No, this visitor came to play! Tino!

We started the day off with her showing us her traveling shoe collection and letting us test drive some real boots.

These boots were made for walking.

Then we had makeovers!

They let me use the brush, but kept saying about something about manliness.

So I showed them manly. I fixed Momma's chair.

She taught me some silly faces

And I taught her a few myself.

Then, I took her to my favorite place in the house to do my favorite thing in the world. Cooking in the kitchen!

She is a much more domestically talented than Mommy, but even she needed my help. That cheese bag was so tough!

But in the end the dinner was amazing!!! America's Test Kitchen Baked Macaroni and Cheese. Now this is the cheesiest!

The next day we went to the zoo. And oh the tales we are about to tell!

Yes, it started off simple enough. Tino telling me all about the monkeys.

Ryker enthralled by the climbing and the swinging of those monkeys.

We some bald eagles, they are majestic.

And this thing, well as some other zoo patrons put it, he reminded of us of Kevin from UP. Ryker kept trying to find the elephant because of it.

Seriously, so many cool animals to stare at. (But Mommy was carrying the camera and mostly took pictures of us, sigh).

But who cares, we are pretty cools right. (Notice how I match Tino's shirt, and how my hair is styled so fabulously!)

The Giraffes were out and about and so very cool.

Tino told us all abut the animals.

But now the best part of story can be told. We got to "meet" the king of the beasts.

As soon as we showed up, he walked over to the glass to greet us.

And came right up to us.

Gave us a quick once over.

And laid down to enjoy some shade.

Now Mommy feeling bad for blocking all the other children's view of the lion moved. As soon as she got out of the way another small little boy came right up to the glass to look the lion eye to eye. Guess that is not a wise thing because the lion smacked the glass pretty hard with its paw and gave even our own Mommy a panic attack. We had all been wondering how protective that glass was, we got a first hand demonstration.

After all that excitement we decided to eat some lunch. Need some energy in case we need to run, right?

I of course kept the table in place while everyone else did the simpler things.

We hadn't even broken into our sandwiches when these things came in to attack. Uhm . . . Tino kept talking about a movie ,Birds, and how these Geese were making her a bit nervous. Hm.

Then we got to see this bear up close.

Daddy lifted me up so I could get a good view.

And then we got to see this jungle king (just to let you know, the boy in the orange shirt standing next to me was the one who almost got slapped by the lion. His Mommy was staying really close.)

Definitely intimidating.

Uhm . . . yeah . . . we would like to take our hands home with us.

With all the crowd, Daddy picked me up so that I could get a look. Little known fact, Tiger was the first animal sign I ever learned. So yeah, I really wanted to see one in real life.

And boy did we get real life.

We love you Tino! And I can't wait to have you come again for another adventure filled weekend!