Understanding weekends at an early age

For almost every adult- weekends are the best.  Even for me, a stay at home mom that doesn't have the weekly grind of making it to the office- I can still appreciate the weekend.  For me it means a night out with my husband and the beautiful feeling of arriving home to all kids asleep in bed.  For my kids the weekend means family all play! 
Saturday we made it to the zoo.  It was a beautiful day and with each visit to the zoo Theo learns something new about the animals, but inevitably he always seems to be most amazed by random squirrels running the path or the ball in the gorilla's cage.  After a few hours visiting all the hotspots both my husband and I knew we were getting close to a potential meltdown at any minute but there was just one problem- I mentioned the pufferbelly train so we had to stop.  By now everyone was tired, my husband being the biggest baby (he didn't understand the power of the train)- we had no cash left, only our ATM and we couldn't buy tickets with the debit card.  The closest machine was 1 1/2 miles away at the entrance.  The lady did say cash or check- but who the hell has a checkbook at the zoo- thankfully me.  Way in the deep pockets of my black hole diaper bag I had a single check folded for case of emergency (dr.visit copay, etc, etc).  I told my husband- this is an emergency, he has to do the unthinkable- write a $3 check to get a train ticket for Theo and go for a ride.  It was funny and kind of humiliating- here we were decked out with all of our belongings hanging from our bugaboo, but we were too lazy to hit the cash machine so we wrote the check and made 2 dreams come true.  I could tell when we left, my husband had just as much, if not more fun then Theo riding the train.
We were back in Mill Valley after our 4-5 hour field trip.  We picked up burrito wraps for dinner and carried the kids (both soaked through their outfits) in for a bottle, some fish sticks and a good rinse to lose all the nasty stuff from the feeding stables.  Theo went to bed at 7pm and chit chatted about his day until about 8:45.  It was by far one of his best days and I'm sure he will join me when I say every Saturday morning- yeah for the weekend!

Comments

[Grampa]

I'm sure it is in our DNA. Our little troupe kept the Nut Tree Railroad solvent with our weekend excursions and no one ever tired of riding the little train out and in to the toy store. Great grampa worked for the railroad and I remember bringing him lunch and being just dazzled by the big steam engines that seemed to be so close to the platform and envied all of those people boarding and traveling to faraway places. The great event of childhood had to do with the railroad. The circus came to town every spring on a special train with 'refrigerated cars' and wonderful wagons. We got up at 4AM and joined the crowd that gathered to watch the unloading of all those exotic animals. The elephants did a lot of the work and once everything was unloaded, they pulled the wagons thru town to the athletic field where they set up. The excitement was unbearable and lasted several days.