Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo (how about you, you, you)

If you're not a fan of Raffi then you might not get the title. I have been trying to plan a another daycare trip to the zoo. I bought a membership in May and we've taken two trips so far. The kids absolutely love it and I love any excuse to get out of the house and do something different. Even though it's a ton of work for me. Mostly because I have to pull 4 kiddos, averaging 35-40 lbs. each, in a wagon+lunches+diaper bag=back breaking work. But it's all worth it.

Well, to get to the point, our trip needed to be postponed. About a week ago I was getting gas in our minivan. And because we had enough free gas credit from our local grocery (due to Ron's expensive precriptions) to get up to 30 gallons of FREE GAS. Yep, you heard that right. So in order to take advantage of that offer, I brought along 2 (6) gallon gas cans. With the van's tank on empty and the 2 gas cans I was able to get 27.5 gallons. Of course it irked me that I was throwing away money by not having a third can on hand. If you do the math (which I always do), at $4 a gallon, that's like flushing $10 down the toilet. Moving on. When I carefully placed the cans into the back end of the van, the thought crossed my mind..."Since these cans are full and heavy, they should be just fine back here all alone". Do you see where this one is going?

About a mile and a half from home, I noticed that the smell of gas became really strong. Not hearing a thump in the back, I thought that some fumes had escaped the vent thingy on the top. I rolled the windows down and kept on a truckin'. Welp, guess what? Not one, but BOTH cans had tipped over and the entire trunk area was saturated with gasoline. The panic set in. I ran in the house and told Ron, "I. NEED. HELP." I think he sensed the urgency in my voice and hopped to his feet.

We soaked up as much as we could with some rags, making sure to hang them out on the clothesline instead of clumping them into a pile in the garage and creating a combustible situation. I googled to see if I could find any solutions besides lighting a match and collecting on the insurance (can you say fraud?). Here's a few tips that I found from people who have had the same thing happen. Clean with vinegar and hot water solution (done that twice so far and then shop vacced), baking soda and hot water (done), air it out (it hasn't been closed up for the past week), kitty litter, febreeze, and pour a 5lb. box of baking soda on it and leave for a month. Everything except for the last one sounds fine to me, but we have a time constraint problem. Our trip to the coast is planned to happen in 3 weeks. Hopefully by then the overwhelming smell will have gone away. I really don't want to be driving for 7 hours down the freeway with all the windows down.

Anyone else have this problem? If so, I would love the hear how you took care of it. I'm getting tired of scrubbing and vaccuming only to have the same results when I'm done. And I really don't want to pay the $300 to have someone replace the carpet. As they say, there's so such thing as a free tank of gas...

In case you were wondering....

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Summer life has a way of taking over. Since I last checked in, I've ridden death defying roller coasters (and got a super hideous headache but it was SO worth it!), I braved thunderstorms at the waterpark with the kids, and we had 2 sleepover birthday parties for our darling children.

Even though I've had a running commentary in my head of all of our exciting summer activities thus far, I have felt little to no inspiration to type them out here. I guess that's better than having no life to speak of whatsoever and blogging about that boringness, right?

Here are a couple more tidbits of life around here...

***I came home from swim class one night and Jesse came to greet me with a mischievous look across her face. *oh no, what now?* She had a 'surprise' for me out on the screened porch. Turns out we now have a new member of the family. The neighbor was looking to downsize the amount of pets that he has. He had already downsized the people in his life (girlfriend and her daughter). Ron had just a few seconds to decide to be the reasonable, but mean, dad or the cool and, like, totally awesome dad. He chose the latter. And now we have a cute little fur ball that Jesse has named, Buddy.

Isn't he the most adorable, little ball of fluff you've ever seen?
Sidenote: his eyes are really dark brown, not the evil devilish red that you see here.

***For Nate's birthday we bought him the XBOX version of Rock Band. If you're not familiar with this game, it basically consists of a drum set, guitar, and microphone (for the people not coordinated enough to handle the instruments). Let's just say I may never master the drums, and probably not the guitar, but I can ROCK on the vocals. Well, if they would include more songs that I actually knew, that is. Now if only they would make the game with Pop Hits from the 80's. Or maybe Ryan Cabrera songs. :P

***We had a camping trip planned (at one of the local campgrounds) during the month of August. After some thought the other night, we've decided to travel over to the Delaware coast to visit the beaches. I sooo miss having a beach nearby to go to on the spur of the moment. Both of the kids were really excited when we told them the change of plans. Now, if we can just avoid sunburn and sharks during our little jaunt.

***I finally finished making this quilt for Bearette's baby just in the nick of time.

She has a much cuter pic of it with baby E on top, but for the life of me I cannot get a link to that post.

Then I raced to get the next one started. One of my daycare moms was about 8 months along when I first started cutting the squares. Amazingly enough, I finished it and gave it to her before the baby was born. Even though I "cheated" and pieced it together with the machine, I still did the quilting by hand. I think I even set a my own record with this one!

I personally loved the color scheme on this one. Ron, on the other hand, said, "Pink and green?" but what does he know. :)

I have another little something that I am in the process of making. I can't post any pictures just yet as I don't want to spoil the surprise. Sadly though, I don't think this one will get done before the little babe decides to make it's appearance. I've had other obligations to take care of. Like hanging out with the kids, getting up at O'Dark thirty in the morning for my first daycare child (that's 6 am, ouch), reading my new library book..More Than it Hurts You by Darin Strauss, and of course the endless amounts of laundry. If you've never had a teenage (or pre-teen in this case) daughter in your household you may not know what I'm talking about. It is really quite amazing. Whenever she exits the bathroom I could swear that a freaking tornado hit the place. There is not a clean towel in sight (the floor is riddled with the dirty ones, of course).

That's about it in a nutshell. Hopefully I'll be back around before our big trip to the east coast. If not, see you on the flip side!