Day 1111. Emmy was bugging me to get up this morning, like he often does, and so I got up just after 8 am. They got a bunch of dolls and stuffed animals to join them at the breakfast table and asked me to take a picture of them. After breakfast I took them downstairs, where we read a Bible story together, then I went upstairs to work. I had about half an hour left until my 10 am lesson, which lasted until just before 11 am. And then it wasn't long until I had to go to the kitchen to cook. Randy and the kids came upstairs just before noon, and just after noon we sat down to eat. Tammy and Emmy ate everything on their plates and then had icecream. After having cleaned them up, they went into Emmy's bed to watch some videos until it was time to lie down for their nap, which was the case just before 1:15 pm. I sat down by them and walked away once they were asleep.
I returned to my computer and soon also lay down to sleep, as I was really tired. I woke up, when Emmy walked into the room. Then the others woke up, and then we were all up to get ready to leave, which was the case at 3:30 pm.
Tammy and Emmy used to sit together in a stroller, but a wheel was broken, which is why we hadn't used it in a long time. Now Randy bought a second hand identical stroller for little money to fix the wheel and fixed that newly bought stroller instead. Today it was the first time we used it. And he installed the board to stand on on Sammy's stroller, which is where we had it in the beginning, and so Emmy rode on the board, while Tammy was in the "new" stroller. There were so many ways to get to the flower gardens, but none that worked well. We ended up taking the subway and then the bus, but because of construction the bus did not stop at the flower gardens, and so we got off at the next stop and had to walk all the way back. And then it was still a long walk to where the playground was.
We've been there a few times before, but it was the first time that the church organized a get-together there. The whole time that we were on our way there we could see really dark clouds coming our way. We knew the rain was gonna get us. Once we reached the playground, we saw one other Mom with her kids from church. Our kids started playing right away, and it wasn't long until we felt the first droplets of rain. I had Sammy who was not happy with Daddy, and he and Tammy were on the swing for a short time. Tammy wanted to jump on the blown up plastic, but while she was running to it, it started thundering, and she turned around and came back to me and was too scared to go jump. Instead they ended up playing with those rings to slide along a metal bar, which Sammy enjoyed as well. And then Emmy wanted to go jump, and his sister joined him. But now the plastic was all wet, and so they were sliding and slipping down the side. They were still having fun. In the meantime I had Sammy by the ropes to walk across and kept making him turn around the rope by his waist, making him laugh in the process.
Then the rain got worse, and finally it got so strong that we ran to find cover in a tent set up nearby. There were already a few other people from church in there, and I had the opportunity to talk with one person for a few minutes while holding Sammy. We put their jackets on the kids as they were a little cold. And then the sun was back, and all the rain clouds were gone. We found out that there was farm with animals on the grounds not far away and so we decided to head there, while the other church members were heading in a different direction. We got there pretty quickly and saw the goats right away. Unfortunately it was a double fence so that you could not get close to the animals. Right next to the goats, there were some sheep that we watched eat some apples. Then we headed up a hill, and once on top, there were some goats there, close to the fence, which was a simple fence. We walked on and saw some mice in a cage, saw some fenced off areas where we couldn't see any animals, and then found the chickens. The rooster was really big. There were supposedly also rabbits there, but once I found them, the door was locked. So not rabbits, which disappointed especially Tammy. We had seen everything and decided to make our way home.
The northern exit of the big gardens was right there, and the tram stop right outside. We waited a little bit, then got on the tram, where the kids watched videos on my phone. At the end of the line we got off and got on the subway, where they continued watching. At 6 pm we were back home.
Instead of me spending the next half hour with cutting up food for them, we sat down at the table a few minutes later. I still had some cut-up fruit and had made them some bread with salami. They all ate some food, then went into the bathtub, where they continued eating. As we had eaten earlier, they were already in bed by about 7:15 pm. Tammy threw a big fit because she thought one of her five rabbits were missing, even though they were all in her bed. In the end I was able to end her tantrum by picking her up and holding her in my arms. After a few minutes she returned to her bed and was worn out enough to fall asleep quickly. I was able to walk away just after 8 pm. I ate and spent the rest of the evening doing some more work and hope to go to bed at a normal time of about midnight.
