Day three: The adventure continues!

So here we are the start of our third day and there doesn't appear to be any tar or upset stomachs in sight!  However, we are all still sporting an attractive brown stain on the soles of our feet.  So everything seems to be fine until Papa Z goes to move my cell phone and is nearly scalded by it!  We are uncertain exactly what happened, but we believe a fuse blew in the middle of the night causing an issue with my charging cell phone.  My phone was completely fried and I later found out I could not retrieve any of the information, including all of my contacts!  On a positive note, Silly Jilly woke up and her eye seemed to be back to normal! Yay! 

So we got our things together which is no easy task.  As you can imagine a family of 5 needs a lot of things to keep them going.  And to top things off we have an infant which requires several extra items (i.e. crib, diaper bag, car seat, stroller, Bumbo-used as a highchair).  Since hotels have that little rule of never leaving your kids in the room by themselves, Papa Z had the fun task of loading and unloading the car everyday while I stayed with the kids in the hotel room and played who could jump the highest on the bed.  This is a small glimpse of just ONE of the loads Papa Z got to deal with on a daily basis:

So this day we began our journey to Monterey, CA.  Once in the car Zany Janie began complaining of a stomach ache.  This kept us on pins and needles wondering when and if an explosion of vomit would take place.

Once we arrived to Monterey we went to the Monterey Bay Aquairum:

We had to wait in line to go inside.  While waiting, a random woman came up to the line and said she had a free ticket if someone needed one.  Of course everyone in line shouted that they needed one, but for some reason she approached us and handed the ticket over.  Tickets were $30 and we very much appreciated her generosity.  I often wonder why she choose us, was it because we looked like we had been through the ringer?

We all had a great time at the aquarium.  They had lots of wonderful hands on exhibits for the kids.

Even Silly Jilly had a great time!

We almost escaped our visit without any public humiliation, until Zany Janie became angry at us for making her leave the starfish exhibit before she was ready.  After many failed attempts at trying to teach Zany Janie to only touch the starfish with two fingers, we decided to leave the area to prevent any harm to the animals.  As I attempted to lead her away from the water I felt a hard tug on my hand and realized Zany Janie had just broke free.  Before I could even blink an eye she quickly snatched a starfish out of the water and threw it back as hard as she could splashing everyone in the near vicinity, then turned and walked away.  I did what any parent would do...I quickly turned and walked away horrified, pretending I hadn't notice what had just occurred.

Wacky Zacky and Zany Janie will tell you hands down the best part about the aquarium was the hammer head shark.  They also liked watching the feeding of the rainbow trout.  Zany Janie was paying more attention than I thought to the educational speech because she now believes she is just like a rainbow trout and will change into a male when she grows up.  She becomes angry when you try to tell her otherwise.

We finished the day with a drive to Sacramento, CA to stay with friends.  They welcomed us with open arms and a BBQ.  Papa Z got to see several of his High School buddies and our kids got to run around with kids their age.  It was a fun and relaxing time.

Is it possible that this is just day three of our trip?  Stay tuned to hear the next zany chapter!