Why Do I Do This?

Why is it when you absolutely need to get things done you never feel like doing it? We are leaving for a much needed holiday this weekend and I have about a million things to do. Laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and freezing meals, laundry, shopping for some good beach reading material, packing everything under the sun for myself and the boys. On top of it all, I need to clean the house so the pet sitter won't think I'm a complete slob! Needless to say, it's Thursday and I've only achieved about 25% of what I need to . I'm a HUGE procrastinator. In art school, I got into the bad habit of not being able to work on a project until the night before it was due. I would have everything I wanted to do planned out in my head but I couldn't physically get started until the last minute. Most of the time this process worked out just fine but I do remember a few occasions at 4:00 am when I dropped a pen loaded with ink onto my project and watched in horror as it rolled down said project or being so tired I read instruction incorrectly and cut a project too small. So it's really no surprise to me that I have carried this bad habit into my adult life. I just CAN'T get started unless I know it's crunch time. Oh well, wish me luck!


We visited the zoo again yesterday for Jake's 9th Birthday. This being our third visit this summer, I spent a lot of my time looking at the plants and architecture of the zoo. As you may remember me telling you from my last zoo post, the Philadelphia Zoo is America's first zoo and a lot of the original buildings are still standing and some of the trees look like they have been here since the beginning of time.

I'm not really sure what this house was used for but I'm thinking someone lived there on the grounds of the zoo at one time.
This is one of two identical buildings that flank the entrance to the zoo.

This is one of my favorites. This style is what a lot of the old buildings in the zoo look like. This is the roof of an ice cream shop in the Children's zoo. I love these little windows!

This is what is left of a Northern Catalpa Tree. I wish I had one of the kids stand next to it to give you a better idea of how huge it is. I'm actually in the process of trying to buy one of these trees for my yard. They have wonderful large green leaves and beautiful flowers and funny long seed pods that hang off the branches. My dad used to tell me how they used to smoke the pods when he was little and one time he got so sick he wished he would die. He was a bad boy!
And last, here are the boys in front of the Elephant sculpture. I have pictures of my brother, sister and I standing in front of this very same Elephant. Who would have thought?

I will be back soon to share pictures of our beach vacation. See you all soon!