We're back...

...and we not only survived, we had a really nice time.  As my sister had suggested, the getting ready was far more terrible than the actual going.  Once we were on the road, all went quite well.

We drove straight down to the Alabama line and stopped at the Welcome Center for a picnic lunch.  Una and I had been there twice before together when we went for the Mother-Daughter retreats, but this was a first for the boys.  

We spotted this well-camouflaged moth there.

Since there was no rush to get to Casa Maria and the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word, we had decided to make a stop at the Birmingham Zoo.  It was a good thing we got there when we did, as after about four and a half hours of driving, Gemma was no longer her pleasant self.

The zoo gave me an opportunity to try out my new Ergo!  I love it...an hour and a half of sprinting around the zoo (the zoo was closing at 5) with a 20-odd pound baby on my back, and at the end of it my back felt just fine!

I won't bore you with zoo photos, as you all have your own, I'm sure.  But there are a few I can't resist posting:

Ring-Tailed Lemurs.  I love these guys.  In fact, my greatest gripe about the Nashville Zoo is the fact that it has no Ring-Tailed Lemurs.  They rank even above Meerkats in my book.

This 22 year-old male gorilla was definitely very cool.  He was lazily enjoying his salad and paying very little attention to us.

I fell quite in love with these storks.  They hardly look real.  When my mother was a child in Bavaria, they still occasionally nested on housetops, and it was considered very good luck to have them grace your roof.  I don't know what people did when the birds nested on the chimneys...

I love this shot of Adrian on a turtle, his favorite creature.

Part two of our adventure coming shortly...