Random July

N2 and I went to a birthday party that was a super hero and princess party.  Elsa was there as was Spiderman.  They got super hero masks so decided that they would make up their own superhero names.  Noah is Green Lightning and Natalie is Red Sparkle (such an intimidating name, huh?)

My kids got out their handbells the other day and wanted to play music.  They can read the letters on the page that came with the handbells that have a few songs so they would call out letters for us to play.  Unfortunately they can't read rhythm so the songs didn't sound like what they were supposed to sound like.  We played music for quite a while that day!

 Noah has taken interest in the piano.  He picked up some of Brian's sheet music that is their scratch paper and put it on the piano as if he was playing those songs.  He would also write on the music as if changing the piece or composing a piece.  It was really cute.  However he stopped looking like a little composer one I pulled out my camera.  This is as good as I got.

Milwaukee Zoo

We met up with Marcie and her kids at the Milwaukee Zoo one day in July.  We really enjoyed seeing all the animals and hanging out with her family.  Our kids get along so well!

We went to a bird show and the kids really enjoyed it because the birds would fly right overhead.  Nathaniel really liked the birds too!  Here are the kids waiting for the show to begin.

Afterwards the zoo was very smart and trained a raven to take a bill and put it in a donation box.  The kids each got to give the raven a dollar.  I didn't get a picture of Megan. :(

In the primate house, there is a canoe that people can sit in (it's just a display).  Megan and Noah decided to work together to row the boat.

Natalie and Amelia were just goofy!  They got pretty goofy by this time of the zoo visit.

They decided that they are NOT the size of a baby gorilla.

Nathaniel really was there!

Random August

Here is N2's lemonade stand that they held during our garage sale.  Not too much traffic but we did have Grandma Weidner, and 2 of their preschool teachers stop by!  I think they made about $4 each but some people gave them more quarters than they drank lemonade!  Our neighbors stopped by twice so that was nice.

I took N2 out separately to buy backpacks for kindergarten.  Natalie and I stopped at Target first and they really had nothing that wasn't holograph character backpacks which I did not want to buy and Natalie did not want.  She did want a dinosaur backpack but it was too small to fit a folder in it.  So then I took her to TJ Maxx on a whim and they had backpacks.  At first she wanted a light up owl backpack but I did not want to buy that.  We found a girly John Deere backpack!  Brian was not overly thrilled because it seems too country.  I think it's better than a fru fru backpack!  Noah ended up getting a dinosaur backpack at Target (one that I had seen earlier and thought it was perfect but didn't want to buy it without him).

 Natalie was quite helpful the other day and wanted to do jobs for me.  I asked her to fold the laundry which she was excited about but first she had to get ready!  She dress up as an astronaut in order to fold laundry. But hey, if that's all it takes for her to fold all their laundry, I'll gladly wait while she gets dressed up.

Wisconsin State Fair

We met up with Marcie's family at the Wisconsin State Fair last week and had a great time!  We started by attending a duck race which was quite amusing.  The kids got into it and were cheering for their favorite color.  We were sitting in the green section but they cheered for other sections.  Oh well!

We visited the Family Activity Barn and the kids got to play around with various crops-corn, wheat, oats.  They also got to see baby animals-some of the piglets were only 4 days old!  I think the WI State Fair did a great job with making things accessible to kids.  I didn't get great photos but I did get some of the kids having fun.

We attended a birds of prey show which was not great for kids.  There was too much talking and not enough birds.  We have been to bird shows before where the birds fly around but these birds just sat on someone's arm.  Natalie really liked the birds and her favorite was the Peregrine Falcon.

We went to the Kohls Care Center and they had fun activities for kids.  They had a balance beam and coloring with their feet.  They also had art projects based on famous artists.  We only had the chance to do one of the projects.

 After Marcie's family left, we stayed a little longer and visited some of the barns again.  We found the horse barn and looked at all of them since Natalie loves horses.  We also waited so they could ride on the small tractors.  As we left, we let them ride on a couple rides.

Brian had a twister dog for lunch-a hot dog that had a spiral potato wrapped around it, deep fried and then served with bacon, chipotle mayo, and sirracha.  He said it was really good.

Facial Hair

The other day N2 decided they wanted beards.  I wasn't sure how they were going to accomplish this but they found their face paint crayons and drew beards on.  They both used a mirror to make them look good.  What do you think?

Washington DC Day 5-Udvar Hazy Space Center

I have no pictures of days 3 and 4.  Day 3 we went to the National Zoo and I figured we didn't need any more animal pictures.  Day 4 we met up with Kristin and went to the National Building Museum which was so fun!  I wish I had had my camera so that I could have taken pictures of what N2 built.  This was a really cool museum for kids to explore building with different mediums.  There were also some exhibits that we visited.

Our 5th day we trekked out on the new silver metro line (it had just opened the day before) and took a long bus ride (about 1 hr 45 minutes one way) to get to the Udvar Hazy Space Center where they house the Discovery space shuttle.  This museum has tons of planes including the Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

We got our first view of the space shuttle!

Natalie was being particular and did not want a picture of her with the space shuttle with Noah so this first picture is supposed to just be a picture of Noah with the space shuttle and the next one is with her alone.  I included these because you can see how the space shuttle is made out of little panels.  I thought that was interesting.

 Noah wanted to know what every single thing was in this hangar so Brian took him around and Natalie and I looked at some things and then went to explore other things.  We did play a space "game" with a volunteer there.  Natalie had to put various space items-the Hubble, the moon, the sun, Saturn, etc in order 3 different ways-smallest to largest, closest to farther, and youngest to oldest.  Natalie was far off on the first one and then did slightly better on the later ones.  She surprised both me and the volunteer on the youngest to oldest one.  There was a picture of the sun and a set of blue stars.  She had put them in the wrong order so the volunteer was trying to get her to figure out which one would be newer.  He asked what the difference was between the sun and the blue stars.  She started with the sun is one star and the other one is more than one stars.  The volunteer asked for another difference and she said that the blue stars were hotter than the sun!  She had learned that in preschool.

Later they brought out a space suit-not one that had gone into space but it was designed like the space suits.  We got to see all the layers that the space suit was made and we even got to try on a glove!

 This is what the hangar looks like.  It is just full of planes!

That's the end of the pictures of DC.  We spent day 6 visiting the Natural History museum, Art Museum and the American History Museum.  We really enjoyed our time in DC.

Washington DC Day 2-A Day of Walking and Waiting

We started out the morning by Brian getting up early to get tickets for the Washington Monument and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.  I got the kids ready and down the Capitol for our tour by myself (I managed 2 on the Metro during rush hour!)

We got on an earlier tour even though our reservations were for 30 minutes later.  They must take more people than they allow to book online!  The tour is not really worth it-Brian and I remember seeing so much more when we were here 9 years ago.  There are tons of people in each room that you go into (a total of 3 rooms).  You get headphones so that you can only hear your leader.  Our leader told us about our government (really basic stuff) and a lot about the art in the Capitol.  That's it.  It was not too exciting for N2 nor for Brian and I.  The only cool thing was that all the tours had to stand back in one of the rooms and the Capitol police were being strict.  Some VIP came through with lots of men around him (not anyone that I knew nor one that the tour guide knew).  Too bad we didn't know who he was.  He didn't wave.  The only one who acknowledged the huge group of people standing there was one of the Capitol police at the end.  The tour leader said they don't even do that for the Speaker of the House so it must have been some foreign dignitary.

I really like the dome in the Capitol but sadly it was undergoing renovations.  Such a disappointment.  This is what it looked like.

I really love photographing the Capitol building.  It's so pretty.  It was a gray, overcast day so I don't have any good shots with a nice blue sky.  But I like how it is framed here.

We were able to take a tunnel to the Library of Congress so we didn't have to go through security again-ooohhh fancy!  Let me tell you, the Capitol allows very little-no water, no food, no sunblock, no liquids, nothing.  So there went our water supply for the day and our sun protection.  Once we got there we found out we could have taken empty water bottles and filled them up later.  Oh well.  The Library of Congress was not too exciting.  We then had to find lunch, harder said then done and get over to the Washington Monument for our tour.

We arrived a few minutes late for our tour and Brian was worried they wouldn't let us on the tour.  No worries!  We were at the back of the line for the 1:30 tour so therefore had to wait 30 minutes before going through security.  Then once we passed security we had to wait for there to be room in the elevator.  While outside Natalie decided to take a nap on the bench.

Here are views from the top.

I tried to get a picture of N2 at the monument and this is what I got.  Great picture, isn't it?  Maybe Natalie is foreshadowing what she is planning on doing on the plane ride home.

We then went for our tour of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.  You first watch a movie of how money is made and then you get to see some rooms where money is being printed and they tell you all the same information that they told you in the video.  At the end they drop you in the gift shop (of course!) where they also have displays of what money used to look like.  They also had a chart of how much money tall are you.  Noah was $1,071, 800 tall and Natalie was $1,025,200 tall.

We then visited the other memorials on the mall-WWII, Korean and the Lincoln Memorial.  We did walk by the Vietnam War Wall-there are 3 Weidners listed in the book but we didn't find them on the wall.

 N2 thought that this soldier was carrying a fishing pole.

We then walked over to see the White House.  We did a lot of walking this day!