Steps to Dealing With the Zoo

1. purchase annual membership to Detroit Zoo (because you calculated that two trips with a family of four will more than pay for the membership fee).
2. burn a vacation day on a weekday that your son has a day off from school because special-education schools need to alter their schedules and furlough days in order to continue providing services through the summer while adhering to the whole "days in session" thing (it's a K-12 thing; just follow along with me, if you're uncertain about what I'm referring).
3. pack everyone up into the van and head down to the Detroit Zoo on a Friday morning.
4. determine right away that you should have parked on Level 3 where the ramp is, because the kids freak out in elevators.
5. be thankful that you packed snacks in the backpack to stave off the hangry.
6. understand that the kids can handle about an hour at the zoo, and make your way with due haste toward the front entrance when they lose all coping ability at the back of the park.
7. be prepared for unreasonable wait times at the restaurant that you stopped at for lunch and determine that even 15 minutes is too long of a wait for a table. Leave immediately and go to a restaurant you know won't have that long of a wait for a table.
8. order your kids' lunches and a couple of extra-tall beers for Mom & Dad.
9. finish lunch, head home, dose the kids with Magic Sleepy-Time Juices.
10. Mom and Dad high-five each other. You just took the kids to the zoo and nobody had an unrecoverable meltdown.
11. think about going to the zoo again to see other things you didn't see the first time, but now armed with more information about what the kids can handle and how much time you have before having to pack it in and just GTFO.
12. use this information to plan other, longer trips elsewhere because we can't live shut in at our house for the rest of our lives.