Zoo Rant

I'm going to post my pictures of our fun day at the zoo in a separate post.  For this one, I'm just going to vent.  We were at the zoo and there were a few field trips going on.  Now I normally don't mind going while their are field trips, but today was insane!  The teachers and chaperone's of half of the kids were not paying attention to what the kids were doing and it was all I could do to be polite!

I took Ashton over to see the lions.  One was at the glass and the kids were huddled around. I didn't even care if we made it to that end of the lion exhibit.  The school kids that were their just kept piling in and pushing the pregnant lady with a 3 year old out of the way.  Some chaperone's even encouraged the kids to push us out of the way. This went on for 5 minutes and I had to walk away because I was about to get nasty on some parents!  That same thing happened in the snake house. 

As for the regular visitors, there was a mom with two pre-teen boys going around and shoving Ashton out of the way. We finally separated ourselves from that little family, only to meet them again in the toddler playground.  That's right, the TODDLER playground.  There is an age limit, but the mom didn't really care.  She let these kids run roughshod over the playground until they knocked down the little picture kiosk thing.  Thankfully no little kids were in front of it when it fell or there would have been injuries.  After that she finally took them out. 

We thought we left it behind, but as we were driving out of the parking lot to leave, we had to slowly drive behind two families that were walking in the middle of the road in the parking lot. One mom didn't even realize that her 8ish year old daughter was walking smack dab in the middle of the road.  She was 3-4 feet ahead of her the entire time and did not look back once.  The other family just didn't care and spread out over the other half of the road. 

I don't understand these things.  I know that when kids are on field trips you want them to have fun, but not at the expense of others.  When I chaperoned Sarah's field trips, my groups had fun and behaved.  I gave them boundaries and it worked out.  I could never have let them pull the kind of crap that the kids and parents were allowing today.  And it did not only happen to us.  We saw other families experience the same things before the kids left for lunch. 

And then then parents of the older kids and the parking lot families.  How do you let your kids run dangerously through toddlers and get to the point that they are knocking over toys that could have seriously injured others?  Or how do you walk the length of the parking lot and not notice that your child, who is in the middle of the road, has a minivan a 5 feet behind her?  These things boggle my mind and really push my pregnancy hormones to the limit!

Even with all the craziness in the zoo,  we had a fun visit.  Ashton and Brenna were blissfully unaware of the rudeness of others and had an amazing time.  Sarah saw it and was a wonderful example of how a kid should be on an outing.  Okay, I think I'm done venting!  And now onto some pictures of the rest of our visit!