Discovery center take 2

Yesterday I posted about our little fiasco with taking the kids to the discovery center. Well today I'm going to post about our success. After our last botched attempt we promised the kids that we would try to take them again before they started back to school. So this past Wednesday that's what we did. This time we made sure to check the traffic report before we left. And we also brought snacks and things to entertain ourselves with on the chance that the traffic report proved wrong. Luckily there were no traffic problems, just a little rain. The first thing the kids did was head towards the train station.

They "bought" their tickets and hopped aboard where they were treated to tea.

Then they decided to head upstairs for some more fun. 

I so want one of these things!



First they went to the local Mexican restaurant where Sophie fed the burro a burrito.

Then it was off to the supermarket to pick up a few things.

Then it was time to head to the television studio to film a segment on canoeing.

And then we ended our little trip learning all about pulleys or pushies as Sophie kept calling them.

And yes, my big behind did give this one a try.

We ended up having a great time and I'm glad we gave it another try.

The outing from hell

About two weeks ago my husband and I made plans to take the girls to the Lynn Meadows Discovery center.  The kids love going there to play and are always asking to go so needless to say when we told them we were going they were super excited. Well you know what they say about the best laid plans right?
Normally it takes us about 45 minutes to get to the discovery center so we decided to leave around 11:00. We thought we would drive over there, take the kids to lunch and then go to the center. We were driving down the interstate when we noticed traffic in our lane start to slow down. Then it stopped altogether. Awesome. We ended up sitting on the interstate for over 2 hours. That's right 2 hours. Guess how far we traveled in that time? Less than three miles. At this point the kids were all three in tears and I was pretty close to it myself. Finally we made it to an exit and duh, got the heck off the interstate. We stopped for lunch and decided that we would take the highway instead. We got in the car thinking we would soon be to our destination. Wrong again. What we failed to realize was that in the town we were in there was a huge shipyard nearby and their dayshift employees were just getting off work. Did I mention it was a huge shipyard? As in lots and lots of traffic? Combine all these people getting off work with all of the people getting off the interstate and you have a recipe for disaster. So we entered the second phase of hell. This time instead of sitting on the interstate  for two hours we sat on the highway for two hours. Needless to say by the time we got to our destination we realized that the center would only be open for an additional 30 minutes. Luckily we were able to talk the kids into going to the nearby beach instead.

Even better? There was a nice outlet center nearby so mommy got to go do a little bit of shopping before heading home.

Mommy and Me day

A few days ago Kylie and I had a much, much needed Mommy and Me day.  I try to do one on one things with the girls every so often, but lately it just hasn't worked out for me to be able to do so. I told my husband that I really wanted to do something with Kylie because she's going through that weird tweeny phase. You know the one where your child loves you to pieces one minute, but despises you the next? Well for a couple of weeks now we've been a one car family (long, stupid story) so that really put a dent into our plans, but finally my husband had a day off so we finally got to have our big day.
We went to her favorite restaurant for lunch and talked, talked, talked. It was really nice. Then we went to the mall where she *gasp* held my hand the entire time! Honestly, it was heaven! Then we went to the beauty salon where she got her hair cut into a cute little bob. She had been growing it out for awhile, but was getting sick of all the tangles and decided to get it whacked off. 

I tried to get a picture of her cute haircut, but it didn't come out that well.

 Afterward we went to Panera and treated ourselves to some frozen lemonade. All in all it was a really great day and I cannot wait until our next Mommy and me day comes up.

Shaking my head

A few weeks ago I took the girls to my mom and dads house for a visit. It never fails that when we are over there my mom and dad will try to start finding kid shows on television for them to watch. I've explained to them many times that the kids would rather go outside and play on the huge tire swing or in the sandbox ('cause you know I'm a big meanie and don't have anything fun for them to play with at our house) but they still have to go through this little routine. Every time. So last time we were over there my dad asked the kids if they would like to watch The Flintstones. The girls looked at him like he had two heads and then asked to go out and play. My dad could not believe that my kids did not know who Fred Flinstone was so I was determined to remedy this situation. I'm not a big television person so it took me forever to find the channel with The Flinstones on it (cartoon network btw), but I finally found it. I put it on and called the kids into the room so they could watch this piece of pop culture history.

Audrey came in the room first. Her reaction? "Oh my goodness! It's the cereal people! Kylie, quick you have got to see this!" Kylie and Sophie came running into the room and the kids all three just laughed and laughed because they couldn't get over the fact that the guys from the cocoa pebbles commercial would have their own show. Seriously.
Then we come to the smurfs. We saw the preview for the movie while we were at another movie and I remember thinking to myself, "guess we'll be seeing that one next."

 Umm, no. The girls told me they thought that that the concept of little blue people running around was just creepy. Honestly, I kind of have to agree with them. This weekend Audrey begged me to take her to McDonalds and buy her a happy meal. Imagine her horror when she opened her meal and found one of 'those weird little blue guys' staring up at her. I told her she could just set it aside and we would add it to the donation bag and then I kind of forgot all about it. Until this morning when I awoke to yelling coming from her bedroom. I ran in there thinking that she and her sisters must be killing each other, but instead I found this scene of carnage:

Apparently Papa Smurf (or the weirdo in red as the kids call him) went a little crazy in the dollhouse. I'm totally hanging my head in shame as I've apparently failed my kids on pop culture.

And so it begins.........

This week was kind of bittersweet for me. On Monday I took Sophie to school to sign her up for the bridges program. The bridges program is something our school has set up to for kindergarteners to help prepare them for the transition to school. We found out that she will be having the same teacher that Audrey had last year for first grade. She and Audrey thought this was completely hilarious. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday she went to school for half a day (our kindergarten is full day here) to get a taste of how things would be.

I snapped a picture of her before she left on Monday and all I can say is "Wow!" I cannot get over how much she has grown. She and Audrey now wear the same size in everything except shoes. As excited as I am to see her growing up I am having a really hard time dealing with it. I can't believe this is my baby! She did really well (and so did I. No tears. I swear) and had a great time. She was actually upset when she found out that she has to wait two more weeks for school to officially begin. Personally I'm kind of hoping the next two weeks go by very slowly.

My apologies......

I feel like I owe everyone a huge apology for my flakiness as of late. I realize that I haven't been a very good blogger this summer and I promise that I'll get back into the swing of things soon. Really. I promise. I've just been trying to spend as much time with the kids as I possibly can.
I think that it has finally sunk into my thick head that in a few extremely short weeks that all three of my children will be in school. Some days when my kids are in full tattle tale mode, destroying their bedrooms, tracking mud through the house, singing the "Mom I'm bored" song and in general driving me nuts it sounds like a really good thing. I can honestly say though that I'm not looking forward to it. When Kylie first started school it was bittersweet because she was my first child. I didn't panic though because I still had Audrey and Sophie at home. When Audrey started school again it was bittersweet, but I still had Sophie with me. Now in just three short weeks I have to take Sophie to school for her kindergarten orientation and I'm starting to go into full blown panic mode. Seriously. I have been lying in bed at night just wondering what in the world I'm going to do with myself. And yes, I do have some things that I'm looking forward to doing, but I have a funny feeling that I'll probably be turning the television on pbs kids or noggin just so things will feel 'normal'. So please just bear with me a little longer and hopefully things will get somewhat back to normal around here soon.

A new twist on an old fairytale

Earlier today my children invited me to come watch a play of sorts that they were putting on. Instead of acting it out themselves they dressed up their stuffed animals and let them be the stars. Todays play was Rapunzel. Now as I'm sure you all are quite aware in pretty much every fairytale there is always a bit of romance. My children cannot stand anything mushy. At all. They scream "EWW GROSS!" anytime they see someone kiss. It doesn't matter if it's on television or in real life, they just can't stand it. So I found it a bit funny that they chose to act out a fairytale. Until they reached the end of the play that is. Once the 'prince' rescued Rapunzel instead of giving him a big kiss she turned to him and said, "Thanks for rescuing me, but you know I'm not going to marry you right?" To which the prince (by the way the prince was played by Willy the webkinz whale and the princess was played by Ginger the American Girl cat) responded "Heck no. I didn't want to marry you anyway." Then the narrator (Kylie) ended the play with "And they lived happily ever after. By themselves. The end." I love my little cynics.