Durham Museum of Life and Science

We bought a membership to the Durham Museum of Life and Science for Alice's birthday, and I took her twice over the summer. We went together as a family for the first time since Simon was a baby. It's a great place and they had a blast.

Toothpicks and Play-Doh

Simon's school work

Simon writing his name

Simon has been obsessed with two things lately: paper airplanes and writing his name. Our kitchen floor is always littered with paper airplanes bearing variations of Simon's name on them.

It's funny how persistent he is with something that he sets his mind on. He works on writing his name at school.

And he works on writing his name at home.

Grayson & Family visit

On Thursday night our good family friends, Lindsey, Brent, Grayson and Brie came back into town and stayed with us for the weekend. We enjoyed hanging out with the grown ups, while the kids played together.

On Saturday afternoon we went to the art museum.

On Sunday morning we had a playdate with the daycare crowd at the nearby park.

 

 

Then, Sunday afternoon, they headed back to Richmond.

Go Ape

My friend Natasha (aka Izzy's mom) organized a morning out for the moms in our friends-from-daycare group to go to Go Ape, an outdoor adventure place that has a 3-hour course where you do ziplines, canopy walk challenges, and Tarzan swings (all while wearing a harness of course).  My friend Jenn (Anna's mom) dropped Anna off at our house for a playdate (read: Zac babysitting) and we drove to Go Ape together. It was a great morning of group bonding where I successfully did not dislocate any shoulders. It was funny when I sorted the pictures by time and noticed that the girls back home were having much of the same adventures we were having. I shall display the pictures in chronological order, so you can appreciate the juxtaposing of the images.

Andrea, Robyn, Sera, Jenn, Natasha, Hillary

  

Don't we look happier in the after picture?

Bug Fest

Every year the science museum downtown holds a special Bug Fest event. We took the kids this year and Simon had a blast and just kept saying, "More bugs!" as he went from display to display. I can't imagine what it would have been like if we brought him here last year at the height of his bug obsession (I'm not sure why we didn't, actually). Alice was mainly interested in the crafts. It didn't take long for us to split up: Zac took Simon around to all the bug exhibits and I stayed with Alice as she did the different crafts. The station she spent the longest at was the scrap exchange booth, where they had an assortment of random things kids could try to make crafts out of. It was fun to see all the different ideas the kids came up with when they weren't given a particular task or structure to follow. Simon's special treat was chocolate covered bugs and Alice got a normal popsicle.

Some chemical company was handing out these cool butterfly wings for free.

Alice and Simon spent about an hour playing in the rocks under the giant globe as we were leaving the science museum. We met Alice's friend Lukas there (randomly). They found this great plastic champagne glass in the bushes.