Trip to Evansville

We drove down to Evansville in July for a visit. The kids had a great time playing with all of the Jacksons. Becca was in heaven because there were kids there who would play pretend games with her for hours (this is not my favorite kind of play. I get tired after a few minutes of these games where I have to make ponies talk or pretend to find a lost cat [Becca] and take it home, etc... but she is all about this kind of play right now.)

We also went to the Children's Museum (thank you, Brigid, for being my helper there!). We loved this last year, and this year it was just as much fun: 

We stayed in a hotel that had a pool, which the kids loved (isn't that most kids favorite part of any vacation?) Here's Samuel doing a cannonball into the water:

Our hotel (Hampton Inn) had a really nice breakfast each morning. Since I have such early risers (and because of the time zones we were an hour behind our normal Fort Wayne time), we were up and dressed and down for breakfast each day when they opened. At 6:30. One morning we had enough time to eat breakfast, go buy a birthday present at the store, buy donuts for everyone, and be at the Jackson house by 8:30 am. Sleep? Who needs it? Apparently not my kids. 

On our way home, we normally stop at a Dairy Queen for ice cream: 

I liked this sign on the door (in case you can't read it, it says "Dairy Queen bans all frowns and sour moods on these premises.") I'm thinking about putting one of these signs on our front door to our house.

We had a great time on our trip to Evansville!

Doc McStuffins

Similar to the Princess Tea Party Becca attended this summer, she also went to a Doc McStuffins morning at our Community Center (they have such great programs there for preschoolers!). Here are some of the fun activities they did that morning:

1. The kids made their own doctor kit (ziplock bag with bandaids, cotton balls, a plastic syringe, etc...).
2. They made a "big book of boo-boos" (this is something Doc uses in the show to write down what's wrong with her toys).
3. Each child got to pick a stuffed animal from a box and take turns giving them a check-up with plastic doctor tools. The teacher would hold up each tool and ask if anyone knew what it was called. Becca actually knew the thing you use to look in a person's ears is called an otoscope (thank you, Disney Junior!)
4. They played Pin the Bandaid on Stuffy (snowman toy from the show).
5. Doc McStuffins bingo.
6. A scavenger hunt where the teacher would read a clue, the kids would run to a part of the room and then have to do an exercise like walk along a balance beam, jump over cones, etc... The scavenger hunt was the last activity and at the end each child got a little bag of M&Ms. This was undoubtedly Becca's favorite part of the morning.

Here are some pictures of the morning:

3D Printing

Earlier this summer Samuel and I went to a class at the library about how 3D printing works. 3D printing is really cool! We learned that you can make a model of just about anything on the computer and then print it out on a special printer. At home we used a website called thingerverse to find patterns of objects people had already created and then imported those files into a website called tinkercad. From there we saved the files and took them to the library to print.

Samuel wanted to print something to do with Star Wars so we found a pattern of a darth vader keychain. The keychain was about 2" tall. This took roughly 40 minutes to print. It was really interesting to watch. The printer (which is about the size of a large fish tank) uses spools of this plastic material that remind me of lanyard material from my days at camp. At our library you aren't allowed to request which color your object prints - you just have to use whatever spool is on the printer. The day we went they had white.

The printer first started out by printing a line of the white plastic in the outline of the darth vader shape and then built upon it, line by line. It's hollow inside.

Here are some pictures of the process.

The 3D printer:

The finished product:

Because we took the class at the library, we had a certificate to print this out for free. However, it's very reasonable to print things if you didn't have the certificate. Our library charges by the amount of time it takes to print - objects that take up to an hour cost just $1. 

I bet when I look back on this in 20 years, this kind of technology will seem so simple, but for right now we had fun learning about it and think it is really neat!

Zoo Time

We met up with Meg, Lilly, and Zach at the zoo this summer. It was a super hot day, but we had a good time. The kids were interested in things in the following order:

1. Riding the rides (our zoo has a train, a merry-go-round, a ride where you sit in a log boat and ride down a lazy river, and a sky safari where you ride in a chairlift over the Africa section of the zoo).
2. Eating overpriced zoo snacks like ice cream that cost about $5 a cone.
3. Seeing actual animals.

Here are some pictures (none of any animals, you'll notice, since even though we were at the Zoo, those were not as interesting as the rides and snacks).

All 4 kids at the entrance of the zoo:

Riding the train:

Everyone in a little treehouse:

Meg, Lilly and Zach on the chairlift ride (if you look carefully you will see that Meg is barefoot. They don't let you wear flip flops on this ride in case they fall to the ground. She had to leave them at the bottom and get them when the ride was done):

The only pictures that include an animal. Never mind that it is a statue of a turtle - it still counts.

Princess Tea Party

In addition to the Princess Tea Party we attended at the library, Becca also went to one at our Community Center. There were about 10 little girls there who were all dressed up. The girls got to decorate paper crowns, play a game similar to hot potato but with passing a magic wand until the music stopped, put a paper kiss on a frog poster, and decorate cookies. She had lots of fun!

Summer Fun at the Library

Our library has a great summer reading program for kids of all ages. In addition to reading books to earn prizes, they have a lot of activities that kids can take part in. So far this summer we have seen a magic show, taken a class about 3D printing, made fairy houses, went to an open art session (they put out tons of materials and kids can make whatever they want), met Pete the Cat from those books, and attended a princess tea party.

Here are some pictures of the kids at some of these events (no picture of Pete the Cat since Becca was kind of scared of him).

All of the princesses did a parade around the library so everyone could see their beautiful costumes:

Open art:

Becca making her fairy house (Samuel sat this one out. He said it was too girly for him):

I love our library. They provide all of these great (and free!) activities that we have certainly enjoyed this summer. 

Yes Day

A few years ago we first read this book at our house:

It's all about a boy who gets one day a year where all of his requests are answered with "yes". Every time we read the book, the kids ask when they can have a Yes Day here. One day a few weeks ago we had our own Yes Day. Before we started the day, I made sure they understood Yes Day did not mean they could just ask for me to buy them tons of toys and then expect the answer to be yes. It wasn't Greedy Day.

Here are some of the things they asked (I said yes to all of these):

Can we eat dinner for breakfast (including chocolate milk)? Yes. Notice that Becca is eating macaroni and cheese at 6:00 am. Samuel requested a hot dog. For some reason I didn't get a picture of that.

Can we NOT make our beds? Yes.

Can we make our own pizza for lunch? Yes.

Can we eat our lunch UNDER the table? Yes.

Can we go to the playground? Yes.

After the playground, can we go get ice cream? Yes.

Can we stay up really late and watch a movie? Yes.

Was it a fun day? Yes.

Overnight at the Tin Caps

The Tin Caps are Fort Wayne's local baseball team. Samuel's cub scout group had the opportunity to watch a game and then sleep overnight on the field. Added bonus: it was Star Wars night at the game, so there were people walking around in costumes, Star Wars music being played, trivia questions, etc...

Here are some pictures with Johnny (the team mascot) in Star Wars attire, and with other Star Wars characters:

The game itself didn't get over until 10:00. Then there was a fireworks show. Then the kids could run the bases if they wanted (Samuel did not), and then we were allowed to set up our tents on the field. By this time it was 11:30 at night. Keep in mind that Samuel normally goes to bed at 7:30. Despite being up so far past his bedtime, he did a great job with the tent, basically setting it up all by himself.

After all of the tents were set up, they showed a movie (Monsters University) on the big screen. We made it to almost the end of the movie and fell asleep around 1:00. Everyone had to be up and off the field the next morning at 7:00, so it was a short night (even shorter for some of the kids who were still running around playing tag and screaming at 1:00 am. We were so tired we slept through that noise.)

All in all, I think he had a lot of fun. I can still remember when I was in Girl Scouts how we got to sleep overnight in the Boston Museum of Science, so I hope he has fond memories of this night for a long time!

Rocket Launching

I have not posted anything on our blog in months. Now that it's summer here, I am going to try to get caught up. Back in April, Samuel's cub scout group launched rockets one night. He LOVED this activity. Here are some pictures:

Squirm

This week at school, the 2nd grade classes put on a musical called Squirm. It was all about things like bugs, worms, spiders, bats, etc... things that make people squirm. It sounds creepy but it was actually really really cute. Each 2nd grade class was one of the squirmy things. Samuel's class was spiders, they wore these great paper hats with spider eyes and legs on them, and they did a version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider that was like a rap.

Here are some pictures and videos from the show.