Trampoline Park

Last Friday, we visited an indoor trampoline park close to our house.  We arrived when it opened, and literally had the place to ourselves for the first 45 minutes.  The boys loved jumping on the giant trampolines, and I loved not having to worry about anyone else bumping into them.

The random arcade games that lined the back wall were also a source of entertainment!

Space Week

Today concluded our final day of Space Week.  On Tuesday, we visited Space Center Houston.  It was probably my biggest adventure with both boys on my own, and they did great.  But, for the first time ever, Shannon was not at all content to watch from the stroller.  He wanted in on the action!  There were lots of ramps and stairs and places where he could get into trouble, so I feel like a lot of our visit was spent chasing him around.

Does he look like a little boy in this shot, or what?

Other shots of the boys wandering around:

Conveniently enough, "super moon" also fell on space week, so we woke Landry up to look at the moon a few hours after he went to bed.  That might not have been our smartest parenting move because he was up for a while after that!  We also had fun with some space crafts (no pun intended) this week - thanks again to Pintrest!  We made stars from glitter and a rocket ship using construction paper and glue. 

Next Up:  America Week 

Coming to Our House Today....

This beauty of a dryer is being delivered later this afternoon, and I'm pretty excited to try it out.  Our trend of not having great success with GE appliances continues because our current dryer bit the dust after less than six years of use.  A couple of months ago, the felt seal fell out.  I didn't think much of it because it worked fine without it, but it recently started making a terrible screeching sound.  We researched online and were spooked by a story of the friction caused by the metal rubbing against metal being enough to catch lint on fire.  So, we picked this LG one out last night.  It's a little bit fancier than I'm used to, but it has a steam dry feature that I'm excited to try. 

Egypt Week

We wrapped up Egypt week yesterday.  We spent a little bit longer than a week on it because Landry went to VBS last week, which meant that we didn't have any free days to take a trip to the museum's Egypt exhibit.  Alas, we made it there yesterday morning when the museum opened (my favorite time to visit anywhere in the summer) and saw plenty of mummies, pharaoh statues and other miscellaneous Egyptian artifacts.  I have no pictures to share because the exhibit had a no-photography rule, but I did walk away with a couple of funny Landry sayings instead:

#1:  When I explained to him about the mummies, I really thought he was comprehending what I was saying.  He repeatedly walked up to the mummy cases and said, "Here's another mummy."  Then, when we were leaving, he said, "We saw lots of mommies, but where are all the daddies?"

#2:  I pointed out some of the statues in the cases and told Landry that they were idols, or wrong gods.  On the way home, he said, "Mommy, when I get to heaven, I'm going to walk up to God and tell Him that we went to the Egypt museum and saw some bad gods."  The mental image of that playing out continues to amuse me.

During the week, we also looked through some picture books about Egypt and did a couple of pyramid crafts - a two-dimensional one out of Corn Chex and a three-dimensional one out of sugar cubes.  Thank you, Pintrest for both ideas!  Shannon saw to it that neither pyramid lasted the week - He ate the Corn Chex glue and all and carried most of the sugar cubes one at a time to the toilet and flushed them, one flush per sugar cube.  Truly, life is never dull (or calm) around here!

Next week (or technically this week):  Space week

Dinosaur Week

Today, we wrap up dinosaur week.  The highlight of the week was a trip to a dinosaur park outside of Bastrop.  My good friend Kim came with us and was a tremendous help with the boys!  The park consisted of a 1/2 mile gravel trail through the woods with dinosaurs (some life-size and impressive and others not-so-life-size and not-so-impressive) spaced along the way.  Come to find out, Landry was extremely nervous about having his picture taken in front of any dinosaur with sharp teeth but completely fine to pose in front of the vegetarian ones!  We ended up seeing most of the dinosaurs that we recognized by name and a few others as well.  I wouldn't go as far as to say that the destination was worth the drive, but we were glad that we went, and both boys seemed to have a great time. 

We also read a couple of dinosaur books from the library (nothing memorable) and did a couple of dinosaur painting crafts - handprint dinosaurs and painting dinosaur tracks.  But, then in typical three-year-old fashion, Landry smeared the paint on both, so there aren't any good pictures to show of either.

Next Up:  Egypt Week

Butterfly Week

In an attempt to add some structure to our otherwise unstructured summer, I've assigned each week a theme.  My goal for each week is to do at least one craft, read at least one book, and take at least one field trip associated with our theme.  We started this week with butterfly week.  (As a side note, Brian has questioned why I didn't start with something more exciting, and Landry apparently agreed because he's asked me a couple of times why we can't do train week or dinosaur week instead!)  Our butterfly crafts have been VERY simple - paper cut-outs with tissue paper squares glued-on, and cookie cutter butterfly tracings.  Our books have been equally simple, but we have learned a few obscure butterfly facts like a) butterflies don't have eyelids so they sleep with their eyes open and b) butterflies have long tongues that are curled up until they unravel them to eat nectar.

Today, we took our "butterfly" field trip to the Museum of Natural Science to walk-through the butterfly center.

Posing in front of the butterfly outside to prove we were there...

Shannon walking through the butterfly center with his puppy...

Landry's attempt at photographing the butterflies, demonstrating it's possible to take a picture in the butterfly center without capturing any butterflies....

Next Up:  Dinosaur Week.  Here's Landry working ahead...



Shannon's First Haircut

This past week, Shannon had his first haircut.  We went to a kid-friendly place in Katy after swim lessons, and Shannon did great.  By great, I mean NOT A SINGLE TEAR!!  He sat in the taxi-cab-shaped chair and ate animal crackers the whole time.  He ducked a little bit when the stylist used clippers and winced when she wet his hair with water, but that was it!  It's almost too uneventful to post about, except that it's such a big milestone in his little life!   Ahh...the joys of a laid-back second-born!

Before picture:

During:

After (still eating animal crackers!):

Big brother who came along for moral support (and needed a haircut of his own!):