It's a ZOO out there...

Saturday morning, we loaded up our boys and headed north to the Nashville Zoo with Jamie's mom, Debbie, as well as Jamie's brother, Wes, his wife, Haley and their little girl, Madelyn.  Tony, Jamie's dad, was originally going to go with us, but decided to stay behind since his dad, Papa Jim had to be admitted into the hospital.  We arrived at the zoo to drizzling rain, however it was actually kind of nice because it cooled everything off and we weren't dealing with the sweltering heat that we've had the past few days.  Their zoo is set up to imitate the natural habitat of where each animal is from rather than the animals being in different cages.  It was really neat because you could get so close to the animals!  The only downfall to the "natural habitat" was the mosquitos... they were EVERYWHERE and Noah and I got eaten up!  Funny how mosquitos are attracted to some people and not others; Collier and Jamie didn't have a single bite!  Poor Noah looks like he has the chicken pox because he has so many bites.  Their gift shop needs to carry bug spray because they would make a fortune off of it!  Madelyn and Noah really enjoyed themselves and took in all the sights and sounds.  Madelyn liked the meerkat and Noah liked the reptiles.  Collier was perfect the entire time and enjoyed riding along in his stroller.  In fact, none of the kids had naps but all behaved wonderfully.  After several hours at the zoo, we headed to our hotel for check-in.  I was able to get Collier to take a nap but Noah was still going strong so he played with Madelyn and everyone else in one of the other hotel rooms.  We later enjoyed a delicious dinner at the restaurant in our hotel, Omaha Steaks (and bumped in to a friend from college that we haven't seen in YEARS) and then ended the night with cupcakes from GiGi's!  Noah had the BEST time; he was in a great mood and loved being at the hotel with everyone.  After going all day without a nap, Noah finally starting wearing down while we were at dinner and he CRASHED as soon as we returned to our room and his head hit the pillow.  We all had such a great time together and enjoyed the fun memories that were made.  Hopefully, this will be something that we can do each summer with the kids!