Box Sliding

I'm planning to clean out the garage this weekend, so the lawnmower box that I've kept in there for awhile really has to go.  The kids had so much fun with it the last time I brought it out, that I decided to save it for one more time.  So today is the box's last hurrah, which would be really sad for the kids if I told them that, but I won't.  Instead it'll just get recycled this weekend, and they'll likely never think about it again.  But for now, it's one last chance to enjoy it, and today they figured out a way to make it into more of a pure slide.  They propped it up against a chair and then slide down it.  The bottom of the box is very sturdy and rigid, so it made for a good slide.  They did that for quite awhile, so I think the box ended up getting quite a bit of extra use for something that had a sole purpose in life of protecting my mower in its journey from the factory to the store to my house.

Fourth Week of May

Jason took the kids to the neighborhood pool. It's a bit cold still, but they (well maybe except for Jason) didn't mind. Here are Joshua and Clara, being swim-ready. 

Jason was cleaning the basement and found his old graphing calculator from high school/college. Clara thinks this is the best thing ever. She calls it her computer and is always calculating pretend results from competitions she makes up. Joshua usually wins.

The rain will not stop. It's extremely annoying. I took the kids to our church this week. Our church is open most week days to the community for play. A lot of moms' groups use it. There is an indoor play area and also open gym that they allow kids to play or ride in. We had a fun day of mostly using scooters (and Hannah played on her trike).

We did have a few sunny times. The kids have enjoyed playing in the backyard. We may need a larger swimming pool. Though they like dumping water out of it a lot, so I am not motivated to give them more to dump.

I took the kids to the pool this week. It was a bit cold for me. 

We had a picnic for lunch. The kids enjoyed (well Clara and Joshua enjoyed it) some lettuce they picked fro the garden at school.

Joshua was being silly while we were riding bikes. And then he said, "Look it's like for dancing". Not sure where he learned about the tango.

At KCDC With Michael's Family

Today I took the kids to the Kansas Children's Discovery Center in Topeka.  I called up my good friend Michael (whom I know from my Actuate days) to see if he wanted to join us.  He was free, so he brought his wife Becca and daughter Bristolynn, and we all met up at the KCDC.  A new exhibit this time was a "mirror" that was actually a video screen that showed a video feed of the person in front of it but with various distorted filters.  The kids, especially Joshua, thought this was hilarious.

They had some soft blocks that you were supposed to put together to make an arch, but the kids were more interested in just walking on them.
Another exhibit is one with pipe segments and ping pong balls, and they pump air through the tubes, which lets you float the ping pong balls in mid-air.  Michael and I are both engineers, so we couldn't help but take our turn at it to try to design a more complex version that still worked.

Then we went outside.  There are a lot of different things to do out there, but the kids' favorite is always the bikes.  They have an assortment of vehicles to choose from, and you can ride them around a long track (well, it's really just a cement path that goes in a circuit).

Clara was struggling to get hers up the hill, so Michael hopped on to help give her a boost.  This led to a race to the finish line.

Then the girls decided they wanted to ride together on one of the bikes.  Clara drove and Hannah rode on the back, but Clara went too fast, which terrified Hannah, as you can see here.

That led Hannah to make these faces when I asked them to stop for a picture, including another good version of her Mckayla Maroney unimpressed face.

But then she realized she survived and that things would be okay, and she cheered up enough to smile for a couple cute pictures of the two sisters.

The next time around she wanted to take it a bit slower and asked me to pull her in the wagon, which I was happy to do.

We then went over to the music garden where they loved the combination of banging on things and making music.

After we were done at the Discovery Center, we decided to go to a nearby park.  In addition to the normal slides and things (which all the kids definitely took advantage of, they had this weird spider web-type thing that everyone loved.  All three of my kids are among the many children in that structure.  After that, we said good-bye to Michael and his family and headed home.  It was a really fun day.  I got to hang out with my friend and his family, and all of our kids got to play together.

Preschool Graduation

Today Joshua had his graduation party from preschool. We are actually continuing at our preschool through the summer. Since it's very child-led, it's a lot of fun for the kids so it's not like they need a break. We are only going twice a week for the summer. Several kids are not going during the summer, though, so we had the party today.

These are all the soon-to-be kindergartners in his school.

The cake was enjoyed by all. It was a yummy Costco cake, and everyone loves those. 

Afterwards, we went to Chick-fil-A for a celebratory lunch. Plus it has been really rainy and stormy so it was a nice place for them to play too.

We have loved this preschool and will be sad to leave it, but Joshua is definitely pumped to be a big kindergartner next year. My feelings are a little more nuanced.

Zootopia and the Bouncy Ball

Clara and I had a date day today.  She really liked going to the theater last time, and pretty much everyone likes Zootopia, so I thought that might make for a good date day.  And it was.  She really liked the move and especially Judy Hopps.

After the movie, we went to Sonic for treats.  The weater was awesome, so we ate outside.  I tried one of their new creamery shakes and was not impressed.  Next time I'll just stick to the basic shakes and malts which are already great.

At the theater, I let her get a bouncy ball from a vending machine, as she really wanted it, and it was only 25 cents.  It turned out to be a great buy, as we spent the rest of the afternoon playing with it.  Here Clara is playing with it in the grass, but later we moved to a nearby empty parking lot and bounced it around and chased it.  It turned out to be a prominent part of our date day, which was yet another fun one.

Exercising

Recently I went down to the basement to get something, and the kids followed me down (as they always try to do when they can), and they noticed some free weights we have down there and asked what they were.  I explained, and they were suddenly very interested in exercising with the weights.  They really are a challenge for Clara and her spindly little arms.  Since then they have asked a couple different times if they could exercise, including using my Perfect Push-Up set which was also in the basement.  I'm not sure if they feel like they are pretending to exercise like adults do, or if they feel as if they are actually exercising, but they really like to do it, although their sessions only last a few minutes.

Basket Girls

We have a basket that we use to store the dress-up clothes.  We were going through them today, leaving the basket empty, and the girls couldn't resist climbing in the basket together, resulting in some cute pictures.