Halloween Jack O Lanterns

Small update of our Halloween Jack O Lanterns. We carved them on Sunday and the kids watched. I carved the 2 on the inside, the one on the inside left is mine, and inside right is Drew's. James carved his on the very left, and Evan's on the very right. Happy Halloween! I will post Halloween Trick or Treating photos after Halloween.

Grandma's Visit

Well, we aren't done with the visit yet, as tomorrow I think we will be headed to the Pumpkin Patch, but so far we have had a lot of fun with Grandma's visit. Thursday was raining so we headed down to the Marbles Museum and met a friend. Today after preschool, we went to the NC State Fair and ate and rode our way though the whole place, a couple times. Mom was keen on finding the latest NC State Fair food feature, chocolate covered bacon. Alas amongst the many food vendors, we never did spot it. James couldn't make it today as he was busily working away but Mom Evan and Drew and I packed many things in between all of us, including corn dogs, hot dogs, cinnamon roll, onion rings, ice cream, caramel apples and candy apples.

First I will bring you a few fun things form the beginning of the week and those were the boys learning the reaction they get when they make faces at the dinner table.



And then Evan makes a pretty good face too



Then we have our little Hulk. Don't make him mad, or he will start painting himself green!!!



This is down at Marbles Childrens' museum where they can explore and interact with everything in the place. A lot of fun.

Stage Hands:


Pirate captain:


Then Evan led us on a safari, mining treasure and Drew delivered some sort of treasure packages.



We talked about, proportionally, what the world would be like to be on if tow gigantic little boys came along to play with it and spun it around. We decided that we would flatten or fly of the earth just like that.



The boys then cooperated, impressively so, to rebuild an igloo.



Our next stop on Friday after noon, at the NC State Fair, was the railroad where Evan was insistent on being the engineer. He had to have the front car, and he got it, luckily, after another little boy changed his mind. Drew climbed right up in.



Next, the boys wanted to ride the dump trucks, and they did, Drew with abandon, and Evan with precaution.



By some twist in the cautious winds we were able to convince, then provoke, then force Evan up onto a Pony ride, all the while with my reminders that Grandma paid FIVE BUCKS for this ride and he is getting on the pony! I asked him which pony he wanted on and Evan yelled, "Nobody Pony!' No such luck. I chose Creamy pony. Evan sat up there afraid, and white lipped, but towards the end he relaxed a but as he realized the pony wasn't going much of anywhere but that circuitous route.



Evan was done after that because he had tried too many things, so Drew, while he was on inch under the required height, was allowed come on with me by the graces of a kind carnie. He loved it, yelling UP and DOWN as many times as you can imagine. Drew loved the view as well. A couple who was sat across from us I am sure enjoyed it too as they were young kids looking for some time alone. wink wink. But the girl was kind enough to take a very nice picture of Drew and me.



We stopped by to see all the bunny contest winners and to get our monthly required cute over load of bouncy bunny lips and walked down the aisles admiring all the fluffy bunnys. The boys were more fascinated with the pellets under the cages.



Then the boys enjoyed some Candy Apple for the first time. It started like this, and it ended up with them looking like enraged and starving vampire spawn rudely awakened from their nightly feast.



And lastly, another Barrel Monster Sighting

SparkCon

Every year for the past couple of years we take the kids down to SparkCon, a celebration of creativity. The city shuts down a few streets for a few days, galleries open some shows, people gather to draw gorgeous pastel chalk drawings, and artisans sell gorgeous jewelry, pottery and fine art. Next year I may head down one day with out the kids because there was so much I didn't get a chance to peruse. We packed a lunch and went down. Usually we head down on Sunday, when the chalk art is complete, but this year we went on Saturday and we were able to see the creation in action. There were a lot more people this year signed up to draw as well.





Bottle Cap Car



Here is a "Barrel Monster" that a local NC State University design school student creates. He was actually charged with larceny for past creations and had to perform community service for making the monsters, which are pretty cool. Renegade art I suppose.





An old former hardware store downtown.



This was Evan's favorite chalk art. He loved the "rainbow petals"



The boys saw some children getting their faces painted and for the first time showed some interest. Evan chose a tiger, and Drew, of course, followed suit.

It tickles!





So ferocious!



Drew wasn't so patient and the face painter did a wonderful job of making it quick.





Then he ran down the street growling at strangers.

First Day Back to School

So exciting! Evan is going back for his last year of preschool and Drew started his first year in preschool in the 2's. It was kind of odd to see Drew interacting with children his age as most of his friends are also Evan's friends and older. Evan was very excited to return to preschool and ran right in the classroom as soon as the door was opened. Drew kept yelling at me "GO MY PEESCHOOL!" While we were waiting for Evan's door to open. I knew what Drew wanted, he wanted to get back in to play with the fire truck he was forced to abandon after orientation last week. And sure enough, he did.

His teacher told me he cried during snack time but she couldn't figure out what he was upset about. Oh well! Tomorrow we go back again and I couldn't be more excited either.

To celebrate the first day back I went to Panera and sat down with a newspaper and a cup of coffee for a while then went to pick up a couple things from the grocery store all by myself! I can get and am used to this!

Long Time No See

I am sorry for the long delay in updating the blog. Life is busy and carrying us in new and exciting directions. James is looking for a new job and we are wrapping up summer time. Both kids start preschool next week so that will be fun and exciting. In the mean time here is a quick photo of my two little boys.

Summer Fun

I still haven't been keen on the idea of sending Evan to camp even for a week for summer. It is nice having every day to choose to do what we wish in summer. I really don't like summer in and of itself, heat, humidity, bugs, but I do like the free time and the long days we have to enjoy.

We went to a friend's get together and the kids had a lot of fun. Evan shocked us all by getting into the bounce house and hopping around. In his 4.5 years he has never been keen on bounce houses or any nebulous surface.



The temperature was about 98 degrees and the bounce house was a sauna but the kids played in it for hours.





The next day was Father's Day so for the first time we decided to go to the Durham Life and Science Museum. The Museum was built with children as their focus and almost every exhibit is interactive. We spent several hours there having a blast.

We started off with a train ride that goes around the museum property. We want to go back later this summer because they were just finishing up work on a new dinosaur exhibit and you will be able to ride past life-size moving dinosaurs.



The landscaping of the museum is very pretty taking advantage of native plants and wildflowers.



We went down to the butterfly building next, which is basically a large greenhouse with butterflies floating freely through the air.





There were giant insect exhibits as well with the giant hissing roaches and huge claw faced beetles, scorpians, all kinds of wretched insects which I was happy were separated from me by thick glass. They also had a huge clear -tubed fire ant colony. Drew was quite concerned.



A poisonous frog.



We walked along a boardwalk that winds through a swampy lake area and we were able to see some black bears being fed in their enclosure. The enclosure was quite huge with caves, rivers and waterfalls. The bears tussled a bit as well over the food being tossed to them.



The kids really loved the interactive water pressure contraptions where you pump and water pours out of various pipes down channels into buckets or spurting out of some nozzle.



There were outdoor panels of drums and cymbals, cowbells and all manner of cacophonic fun.




Inside they have exhibits about space travel and various other geologic interests. The weather exhibits were a lot of fun with the opportunity to swirl and create hurricanes and tornadoes.



The kids didn't want anything to do with the tornado.


There was also an exhibit which had a grid on the floor and as the kids ran through different grid zones different instruments played so you could get quite a song going the more children were in the grid and the faster they ran around.

This exhibit had a wall where flowing purple dots would collect on your shadow and you could actually hold your arms out and your shadow arms would collect these little dots, and then you could even whoosh your collection up in the air and the dots would fly up and down as if you were actually tossing them up. Amazing!