We decided to go check out a local bamboo forest last weekend. Yeah. That seemed odd to me too that Alabama has a natural bamboo forest. It was really neat and reminded me of Maryland. The downside of the forest was that it was very small. We planned to be there hunting around the entire morning and it took about 20 min so we had to come up with another plan.
I did give the boys index cards with pictures on them of some things they had to find during our walk. They had fun doing it. Eli collected everything (that leaf he is holding is about as big as his head) in a little pencil box he carried around and showed it all to Nana later in the day when we skyped.
We decided to check out a new playground in Millbrook which is a neighboring small community. It was pretty cool and very similar to the castle park (aka Pratt Park) here in town. They had a blast running around and playing hide and go seek.
Here is Aiden walking the moving balance beam. He's getting pretty good at it. Saturday was the first day of college football so we were all decked out as a family. Needless to say, we got many weird looks at the park with people everywhere wearing Alabama and Auburn clothes.
We had a great time at the park and shockingly, the kids didn't wear themselves out enough because neither napped. Little stinkers. The boys had fun setting out all their Matchbox cars fold ups and playing for a few hours this week.
When eventually resorted to half naked jumping ... it's their new hobby and they are getting pretty good at it. Here are both boys taking their turn and getting some air. This was in the evening - check out Eli's huge belly from all the food he just ate!
Now that we finally got clothes on the boys and are getting ready for bed, Eli decided to play monster trucks by himself. That seems relatively harmless unless you have a crazy little boy name Eli in your house. This child eventually falls onto the corner of an end table and bonks himself square in the forehead.
After about 30 seconds of crying, he moved on and was fine. I felt horrible that I told him to brush it off seeing how immediately this huge bruise showed up on his forehead. Such a little trooper!
Brad has been very busy with schoolwork for the past few weeks. This is what he looks like for a good portion of most nights although sometimes he actually has to read textbooks rather than computer articles. You can see Twix in the background keeping his daddy company.
On Sunday, we decided to take the boys to the Science Museum in Birmingham on Monday. It was the last day of the Diego/Dora exhibit and they were even going to be there!! After getting stuck in a few accidents and some rain, we safely got there at about 10:30am. The line to see Dora and Deigo was huge!!! Thankfully, our boys really don't care. They were having so much fun wondering around on the 3rd floor which is where the exhibit was at.
Brad and I had a hard time keeping up with these boys. The place was crazy busy and the boys stayed together for about 30 minutes. We all stayed together and saw everything together and then the boys were too excited to wait for each other so Brad and I split up and each took a kid. These first couple pictures are of the boys in Pirate Ship. Aiden was putting coins in, they both played with the telescopes, and then Eli played with the coins for a bit.
After we spent a solid 20 minutes at the boat, we moved on to the spaceship. They boys both had a ton of fun "flying" the spaceship and pressing the buttons and moving the levers.
They had this huge section of hard foam blocks. It was so cool. The boys played on those for a while and Brad helped them build a cool little area. Because there were so many kids, the structure didn't stay up for long until kids knocked it down and started stealing pieces. Here is Eli rolling a cheese wedge thing in a canal he made.
Aiden had fun walking on the canal pieces for a while.
On the first floor, they have a really cool kids play area. They also have hands-on stuff for the kids to play with. Here are the boys in the house that is created for an illusion. The floor is slanted and the painted floor changes to make you appear like a giant towards the back of the room and tiny towards the front of the room. The boys are both looking up at the tv screen that has their picture on it.
Aiden moved on to the play area (and Brad went with him) but Eli was fascinated watching himself in the tv. He was hysterical. I almost videotaped him. He was entertaining many people by dancing all around and laughing at himself on the tv screen. We stayed there for a while so he could dance around and laugh. I was smiling and laughing the whole time ... it was great.
The only way I got Eli away from watching himself on the tv screen was to mention bubbles. They had a whole section with huge bubble blowers. This particular blower that Eli has, was one of the smaller ones and he could fit his entire head in it. He thought popping the bubbles with his face was great. He's such an odd but adorable kid.
We finally got reunited with Aiden and daddy over in the kids area on the first floor. Here are the boys at the water table. Aiden lasted here about 2 minutes and of course, Eli could have stayed all day.
Aiden found a water toy that was less wet .... a water gun encased! He liked that for a bit.
Aiden got bored from the water stuff and wondered over to a different area and asked me if he could play with the sand. I got so excited. My OCD scared of dirt and sand child asked to play in the sand. It was awesome. The only thing Eli perhaps likes better than water is ... sand. Needless to say, we could have stayed in this area all day.
We finally got some lunch and Eli had a small breakdown. We were skipping naps so we weren't sure how Eli would respond so a breakdown was not really a surprise except that it happened at meal time and Eli normally loves food. Aiden wanted to take the steps back up to the Dora/Diego floor and Eli didn't so I took the elevator with him. Eli parked himself by this stack of cones and rings and played for about 10-15 minutes. He was having a great time. Such randomness.
We went to go find Aiden and daddy. We had to stop and trying and pump up the car tires. You actually had to be pretty strong to work the pump. Eli was doing his best to pull it up but couldn't budge it without help.
While still looking for the other half of our family, we went by Diego's wildlife hospital and took care of a tree frog. We x-rayed him, washed him, and here Eli is drying him off (the dryer worked via a pedal on the ground). He then took the tree frog over to his cubbie to feed him. It was a cute little area they had set up with all different kinds on animals.
I eventually got Eli to go this giant screen that was pretty cool. Eli is the kid in the yellow shirt on the right. The bugs fall down and the computer program or whatever runs the bugs on the screen, can sense images and the bugs go around. As you can see, the bugs are stopping at Eli's head and falling off to his right. It was so cool.
We finally found Aiden and daddy so Aiden decided to try the bug screen too. His image is pretty cool. That's him below with his arms wide open and the bugs falling into a pile and then trickling off his left arm.
We went back to the area with the big blocks and the boys built stuff for a while. The boys had no interest in actually meeting Dora or Diego so we didn't pursue that given the outcome of seeing those types of characters at Disney. :) The boys built quite a few masterpieces but it was getting too stressful for both of them because their stuff would get knocked down by other kids. Aiden finally found a group of girls to play with. Eli continued to just roll over blocks and squares. I eventually gave a stern talking to main older boy who kept knocking down everyone's stuff. Thankfully he responded well. Seriously though, shouldn't a parent be watching him and have to tell him to stop knocking down everyone's stuff. I told him "a good general rule of thumb is that if he didn't build it, then he can't knock it down."
Brad had to distract Eli from getting upset a few times with some tickles. He also finally found a way that Eli was content .... to build some Eli-size dominoes.
I'm not sure who was worn out more, Brad and I or the boys. We had an uneventful and rainy trip home. It took about 75 minutes to get home which wasn't too bad. We all had a blast and I'm thankful we could spend the day together as a family since Brad was home. We ended up buying a year membership at the museum because it would pay for itself it we go back one more time this year which I'm sure we will do. The kids had such a blast and we didn't even take that much time to look at the fishes downstairs and at the dinosaurs on the 2nd floor.
My college class has started and I don't have that many students to far this semester which would be nice. We'll see how enrollment looks as the end of next week though. I'm exhausted and need to get to bed since I have to wake up early and go to Awana training tomorrow morning. It starts on Sunday night but the Cubbies part of the club is no where ready to begin. We'll see how it goes.
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