Houston Zoo and big smiles

We spent Chris' last day before he had to start work by taking the children to Houston Zoo which is close to downtown. I managed to drive us there and only missed one exit off the highway, which to be honest is nothing short of a miracle given the car dodging that goes on between all the drivers.

The zoo itself, is fantastic, lots of animals, birds and reptiles, plus loads of extra children's activities along the way and a huge kids play area. If it hadn't been so hot we would have spent longer there, but both girls were wilting in the sun. I'd definitely like to go back but I might wait till a cooler month or till we've acclimatised more....if that ever happens!

I've now had two days on my own, the first was really tough and we exhausted all toys and activities that we bought with us from the UK by the middle of the afternoon. Its simply too hot to go outside for very long, and by the middle of the afternoon our balcony area is in direct sunlight as is the park which isn't ideal when they need to burn off some energy. Fearne has been off pre-school for 2 weeks and should have gone back yesterday if we were still in Scotland......and oh my god do I need her to go back! As lovely as she is, poor Martha is being bossed and pushed around by her big sister all day long.

Today however has been great, a friend who we have previously met through another friend in Banchory, came to our rescue and drove us to a nearby soft play centre. The play centre was nothing like we've ever been to before. It's a huge warehouse building, filled with all kinds of inflatable bouncy castles, slides, mazes etc. The girls had a great time and spent quite a bit of time climbing up an almost vertical inflatable wall/ladder and then coming down a 10 metre drop slide....which scared me more than them.

After a couple of hours play, they were both starving so we decided to go for lunch somewhere. Now Houston is not known for its healthy food, and finding something to eat that is not junk food or a chain takeaway is something of a challenge. I have never seen so many Whataburger, Denny's, Taco Bell, Macdonalds and Mexican restaurants all in one place. However, we hit gold and found an amazing Mediterranean grill restaurant with loads of different salads. The girls loved the fresh pitta breads, houmous and plates of melon and pineapple. So all in all it was a hit with adults and children, which is quite a rare occurance!

Throughout all of this Henry was a sweetie, and just slept, waking for the occasional feed. He's been giving us lots of smiles over the last week but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't catch it on camera. However I finally managed to catch one after his bath earlier although its not as clear a picture as I would like it's the best I can get for now.

And finally just to end my really good day, I finally managed to fit in taking the girls for a dip in the pool after tea. It was lovely just to cool down after such a hot day. As I type this I'm listening to the weather forecast here, apparently there were highs of 93 degrees in Houston today which is the highest for this time of year since 1987!....oh and now they've just announced it's only 6 weeks till hurricane season starts, eek!!!