Summer Staycation

Our family's tradition has been to take our vacation in the summer, whether it's large or small. But we're changing things up this year, and going on a super fabulous, super secret (Bub doesn't find out until Friday) vacation in October. He's finding out Friday, because that's when we'll start counting down to when we leave. So, in lieu of a vacation this summer, we're doing a little staycation at our house.

I decided each day would have a theme, and we would try to involve as many activities around that theme as possible. So, each day, I'll report back what we did, what worked and what flopped.

We began yesterday with our annual Ice Cream For Dinner day. Now, we have plenty of ice cream throughout the summer; probably more than we need, but it's summer. But, this is the one night, I let Bub scarf down a PB&J sandwich, call it good and start loading the goodies onto his mound of ice cream. Last night's choices included blue sprinkles and lots and lots of Magic Shell. Thing 1 and Thing 2 enjoyed a little neapolitan. In fact they enjoyed it enough, they drank down every last drop of melted goodness out of their bowls and giggled the whole time.

After ice cream, we headed to the pool for a fabulous evening of splashing around.

Day 1, a success.

Today was game day. Since the projected forecast was 100+, I thought we'd make today an easy indoor day (our other days all include crafts of some sort and I've tried to gear our food to the theme also). Of course, Bub thought this meant he could play his new Wii game all day...But we managed to squeeze in a couple rounds of his new Lego Robots game, and worked a puzzle. I had planned on doing more after lunch, but his friends showed up to play and he was off. Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a good time dumping out the Sesame Street Chutes and Ladders game and playing with the game pieces.

Day 2, pretty much a success.

Tomorrow is Water Day!!! Off to get water balloons ready!

Milwaukee Weekend

We got to take a great trip to Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago to celebrate my brother-in-law's graduation from medical school. We were so excited for him, and excited for our first real road trip with the little boys. In the end, we didn't attend the actual graduation - even though that was the reason for the trip! The little boys didn't sleep on the ride to Milwaukee and then had a really hard time getting to sleep once we got to the hotel at 1:30 AM. We were afraid if we pushed through a 2.5 hour graduation, there would be a colossal meltdown that would prevent us from attending any of the other family activities for the weekend.

So, in lieu of attending graduation, we celebrated at a fun little kids' hangout we found. It was part Wonderscope (kid's museum here)/part McDonald's play area. But, showing up on a Friday morning means we were the only ones there for about an hour and a half, and by the time we left, there were only 4 other kiddos there. So, it was really nice for the little boys, because no one was running them down.

The little boys loved the climbing play place.

Rockin' the tunnel.

The tongue out helps for crawling concentration.

They had a room full of soybeans for scooping and digging. You could even load up a hopper and dump the beans into huge Tonka dump trucks to transport them. They definitely spent the most time in this room.

Bubbles!!!! They had a bubble machine that kicked on about every 20 minutes. As soon as the boys heard the buzzer go off, they went running for the bubbles.

And of course, they had a train room. Although it was a bit disappointing. When we read train room on the website, we were expecting a bit more than this...we have this at home. But it was a hit with our two, or course.

After graduation, about 15 of us went out to eat to celebrate Mike's graduation at a fun Mexican restaurant. We actually ate in a train car. Yeah, pretty happy little boys; except I'm pretty sure Thing 1 wanted it to "goooo!".

It was a great weekend, and all three boys traveled really well, which gives us hope for future vacations. And we're really, really proud of Dr. Mike!!

We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo. How about You, You, You?

Sorry, the music teacher in me, couldn't resist. Bub was not overly impressed when I sang it last week on our way, either. But anyway, we headed to the zoo last week during that fabulous 100 degree weather. S took the day off so we could have one last fun, family day before the school routine started up again.

It was hot, but we had lots of fun and got to see the new polar bear. Now, it's great to have a polar bear back in KC, but it's a really big deal around our house. We have been FOTZ since Bub was 1 and they announced they were bringing a polar bear when he was about 3. He has been asking on a monthly, if not weekly, basis when the polar bear would be here ever since. It's been a loooong wait. So, he was bouncing off the walls on Friday, when we announced we were headed out to the zoo.

Such a brave kid, petting a lion : ).

Well, she was absolutely beautiful and so playful. We got to see her dive off these rocks into the water, kick off the glass and flip backwards, stand on her hind legs, and eat frozen fruit while swimming around. It was definitely the highlight of our trip. And the Kansas City Zoo staff did a great job with the observation area. There is both an outdoor and indoor observation with seating on the inside and a great view of her pool. Good job KC!

This is the baby chimp, and he was fascinated with the boys. And they were smitten with him. He must have sat at the window for at least 5 minutes just checking them out. We even got a couple of "ooh-ooh, aah-aah"s out of the boys.

Somehow, we didn't get any pictures of the boys : (. I think they were napping when we took most of the pictures, and once they were awake we tried to keep moving so no pics.

Omaha Trip

We ran up to Omaha at the end of May to see S' family. It was a quick 24 hour trip, but we managed to fit in some good family time. Including a morning on Papa's trains.

R is finally old enough to be engineer.

A little picnic before heading home.

R and his cousin.

I'm Still Here

It's been a little busy around here, so blogging and picture posting has taken a definite back seat to our fun. I'll get updates done soon, but we've been busy swimming, going to the zoo, going to Omaha, and enjoying the start of our summer. Oh yeah, and someone learned how to do this...

so I can't turn my back for a second.