Daytripping

With Mr. Incredible off this week we've been hanging out at home doing chores and going on daytrips. At one point we had discussed going to St. Louis for several days while he was off and I think we are all glad we decided to stay home.

Our trip to the Madison Zoo was a huge hit. We really liked it there. However, next time we will know that if the main restaurant is closed, the smaller one has no vegetarian entrees. Mr. Incredible doesn't eat beef or pork or most animals. He does eat chicken, turkey and some fish. They had no chicken, turkey or fish. He had French fries for lunch. The iguana wouldn't share his veggie and fruit mix. I asked. Mr. Incredible insisted it wasn't a problem.

It is a small zoo, most people would cover it in about a half day. It took us all day. We are zoo-ies. Real fanatics. I was expecting the zoo to be small, but I wasn't expecting it to be so nice. You know how a lot of small older city zoos are pretty run down. Not Madison. We can't wait to go back.

Afterward we met Mr. Incredible's Dad and Step mom at a nearby mall. We had dinner with them, then they took Violet shopping for her birthday (yes, it was another belated celebration). She chose Build-a-Bear and made the Pumpkin Fun Kitty who is the current seasonal bear. (I don't know why, but my color configuration is not having my links show up. I've played around with it a little but haven't cracked the code yet. Click on Build a Bear to see the kitty.) She named her Tangerine.

Today at about noon we decided to grab lunch from Subway and head out to a forest preserve to hike. We chose a place we'd never been to that was about a half an hour away. It was really nice. We ate and hiked both the short and long loops of the trails for about 3 miles total. There were hundreds of teeny tiny toads all over. We had to walk really slow to avoid stepping on them. Mr. Incredible (who is really tall) kept walking into spider webs. We must have been the only ones to have hiked the long trail today. He finally started carrying a stick in front of himself to catch the webs. It was quite amusing.

I did a big harvest in my garden today. I should have taken pictures. I picked my spaghetti squash. I'm sad to report that some bugs had gotten into some of them. I pulled a slug out of one - now that was gross! I salvaged 6 of them. Four I cut into, removed anything remotely icky and baked them. Now I have 3 quart sized bags of cooked spaghetti squash in the freezer and one bowl in the fridge. Tomorrow I have a dinner with my lady friends so I'm going to make a spaghetti squash casserole with corn, black beans, green pepper, onion, tomato and chili powder to take with. The hostess has already told me she is keeping the leftovers.

School starts Monday. Probably. Violet and I are both still in vacation mode right now.

Edited: Well, I played with the colors and I still can't see the links very well and now it is practically exploding off the page at me. Sorry. I'll try again another time.