Friends! A Fun and Colorful Day!

March 12: Today we took advantage of our friends' Spring Break and had a field trip! :) We started off the day at Color Me Mine, a local pottery painting studio. The kids all had a great time being creative, and they are excited about the "Prayer Request Boxes" they made! They each decided on their own that they wanted to use their special creations in this way, which I thought was a neat idea. Here are some pics from our pottery experience:

After the fun at Color Me Mine, we headed to Frisco Commons Park for a picnic and to play. It was a beautiful day, I only wish I had remembered to take pictures! Ahh! :) But we did enjoy the bonus: a girl selling Girl Scout cookies at the playground. :P So glad to have friends!

Climbing Around the Grapevine

March 11: Family Fun Day took us on a small road trip today! We headed out to explore the very cool little town of Grapevine, TX! They have a neat vintage railroad there, and while we were disappointed that we missed the ride, we had fun exploring the grounds and visiting the blacksmith shop, where the blacksmith taught the kids how to make miniature cowboy hats out of nickels! :) After the railroad, we found a pretty little botanical garden and park in the center of town. It was relaxing to walk through and see the foliage and flowers, and also learn a bit about gardening and composting! We explored a bit more of the town, and then took the kids out for special treat--Rainforest Cafe! They loved the thunderstorms every 12 minutes and the animation of such animals as the gorillas, tigers, and elephants. We were seated next to one of the large fish tanks, so there was so gap in conversation around the table. We told them that Caelum's birthday was that coming week, and they sang to him and brought him a huge brownie volcano! He was startled by the attention and cried for pics, but afterward said that was his favorite part. :) Here are a few pics from our day:

Fun at Fair Park!

March 4:

This was a great family fun day! We headed down to downtown Dallas for the first time, to Fair Park. We discovered it is named this because it is the location of the state fair each year, and has a huge permanent ferris wheel, named the Texas Star, towering over the grounds. When we arrived, we discovered that this weekend was Irish Fest, which sounded fun until we noticed that every ad for it spoke of large volumes of beer being consumed. So we stuck with our plan to go to the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science and Children's Museum. A good choice because it was way more kid-friendly, and it was FREE! (Thank you, Tellus Science Museum reciprocity!)

When we were finished touring both buildings of the museum, we strolled around the Lagoon at Fair Park and watched the turtles and the swan paddle boats. It was a very pretty and relaxing was to spend the afternoon!

After all that fun stuff, we were sure hungry! Aile really wanted Italian food, so we did a quick search, only to find our two favorite Italian restaurants! Maggiano's and Buca di Beppo! So we decided we should treat the kids to the Buca experience. It was superb. Sean has pics of the total splurge dessert we had on his phone, so I will try to add those to this post sometime...

Ice Skating Lessons!

March 1:

Another first accomplished for Aile and Brenner today! Neither one had ever been on ice skates before, but today we started lessons at the local ice arena! Fun! Aile loves to rollerblade, so she picked it up pretty quickly. Brenner was a bit more shaky for a while there, but still said it was "SO AWESOME!" and can't wait to go again next week. :)

It was hard to get good pics, and I tried to get video too, but here's a few shots I snapped to give an idea of what it was like:

I couldn't convince Caelum to sign up for the lessons--and believe me, I tried SO hard to convince him! But as soon as he saw the little tikes in their hockey gear skating out there, he was ready to join! But too late--registration was closed! Bummer! But he still had a blast playing with cars and airplanes on the bleachers with a smile...

This picture is actually from the 2nd week of lessons, but I love it and the love they are showing here! :)

Leap Day!

February 29:

Today we decided to celebrate thus day that only comes around once every 4 years. :) We added Leap Day Olympics to our school agenda, and had a blast seeing how well we could do at such activities as Leap Frog, Long Jump, Jump Rope, Obstacle Course, and High Jump!

Here are the kids, leaping for Leap Day! :)