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!