New Jersey Part 2

On Sunday my sister arrived with her fam in tow which commenced the kids activities portion of the trip.  On Monday we went to the New Jersey State Botanical Gardens.  Most of my time was spent playing "good guys and bad guys" with Ben.

After the gardens we headed to Shephard Lake, which was something of a disaster.  My sister was changing into her swimming suit, my mom was tending to the fussy baby, and I (not wearing a swimming suit) was left to tend to the two wild ones who wanted to drown themselves in the lake.  The life guard kept saying, "ma'am, your children..." when they started getting in too deep.  I kind of wanted to kill that life guard, or maybe suggest that she get off her tooshie and help me prevent them from drowning.  I also decided that my sister is a saint for dealing with three little munchkins at once.

Speaking of saintliness and multiple munchkins, the next day we met up with my study abroad friend Emily and her triplets +1.  Holy Cowza!  My mom was flabbergasted and said that it's impossible to even watch all four at once, let alone wrangle them all.  Observe the chaos:

Afterwards I had to escape to Acme and the bakery with my mom, and relax with some Drop Dead Diva. Whew!  How do they do it?

The next day, Wednesday, was an eventful day.  Megan and I had some girls only time and got manicures.

Then we headed out with the kids to a small park in Nutley.  I enjoyed snapping some wildlife pictures. I got this great one of a heron:

My sister and I spotted a muskrat which excited my mom because she had wanted to see one at the swamp park.

I was vastly pleased to see a duckling as well.  My mom said she hadn't seen any baby ducks the whole spring.

But this photo was definitely the winner of the outing: 

Just Ben, Grandma, and some quality play time. After the park we hustled home and got ready to go to a play at the Paper Mill Playhouse.

Note my hideous early 90s dress.  This would be because I neglected to realize I would be wearing a compression stocking most of the time and I packed a knee length dress.  So...I borrowed this longer wonder and a white knee sock from my mom.

I enjoyed the play and the music, but I was not prepared for the ending.  I heard this play was redolent of  The Little Mermaid, but I was expecting the Disney version, not the Hans Christian Anderson version!