Sunshine Shades and Smiles

The girls and I headed out to San Francisco today to meet up with my friend Tina (who lives there)  so we decided to go the SF zoo for a little girl chat and visit the animals. Hadley has never been and Avery was super excited.  Tina emailed me to ask do you think they would like the zoo?  Meaning we live at a darn zoo....literally.  Well, they still loved it.  I asked Avery what was your favorite animal and she told me the goats.  Go figure.  Hadley seemed to love the animals all of them except the woolly sheep which she just cried hysterically in its face.  We made it through without any tantrums, faces full of smiles, and the sun shining.  We had a bit of a scary lunch...all of us decided to stop and have lunch at the zoo cafe, and the little man at the counter says be careful of the seagulls.  I was thinking OK, we just won't feed them.  We sat down to start eating, meanwhile Tina is explaining her fear of seagulls from when she was little and the bird took her food from her.  I just thought really they do that and just though it was funny, well she no longer finished that sentence, and in swoops the seagull. Flaps Avery in the face with a wing and swipes her hot dog right out of her hand. We all jumped up Avery screaming in fear.  Poor kid is now petrified of roosters and birds.  I had one of those mom moments where I jumped up and wanted to just kick the bird or throw it as far away from my kids as possible.  I figured that I would be on the front page of the paper if I beat up a seagull at the zoo and animal sanctuary in front of children.  For god sake the little man at the counter could have told me with a little more authority...watch out the bird will attack you!  So on we went  with our tour talking the rest of the way about the seagull, all the way home about the seagull, and all the way till nap time about the seagull.  So lesson learned again....take the little man more serious, seagulls are now on my list with chickens, pigs and cows, but a great day of girl chatting, happy kids and a crazy bird.  Just a normal day for us!!