Auntie Amy came in for the holiday weekend and straight away was whisked all over the house being shown new and exciting things from the last time she was here.

Including Reghan's ghost.  Thank goodness for old sheets.

The pool was first on the agenda.  It was a treat for Steven and I that we didn't have to run around with the kids, instead, we gladly passed that torch to Auntie.

 

Then lucky her, she came along to a birthday party.  Although Reghan enjoyed playing with the everyone there, her and one of her best friends, Sam, immediately found each other and didn't stray far apart.

Next, was loading up and going to the Old Los Angeles Zoo which is about a mile from the current LA Zoo.  It was originally built in 1912 and when the new zoo was erected 50 years later, they left the old zoo standing, open for the public to roam through the debilitated cages.

By current day standards it's quite small and inhumane but considering the time of construction, we supposed the scale and methods were understandable leaving so many things to be amazed at.

The main entertainment during lunch was watching a wasp literally slice a piece of bread in half to make it small enough to fly away with.  Who knew.

At times we thought about leaving the kids in the cages but then if we left them, odds were strong that both Steven and Auntie Amy would leave me in one...so we opted to take them along.

That night Steven and I took off alone and left Auntie Amy with the three extremely dirty and messy kids.  Bath time was a real treat that night.

Bright and early Monday morning we packed up and headed to the beach.  The waves were rough but the weather was perfect.

With a hearty dinner afterwards.

Followed by a surprise for the kids.  Their very first root beer float and some toys from Auntie Jewlz.  Mmmmm.

In completely unrelated news, the week prior I made a last minute trip to Illinois.  While there we stopped by the Bureau County Fair a few hours before it fully opened on a quest to find some nasty fair food but instead eerily discovered what an empty abandoned fair would look like.  Needless to say it was a little creepy.

But thank goodness the gallery halls were open because otherwise we would've missed out on the competition winners and many farm animals on display and just as I was beginning to miss my man, we came across his long lost relative.  Can you see the resemblance?