Discovery Center

On Monday my mom and I took the kids to the Discovery Center in Murfreesboro.  We also met Missy and Jen there with their kids.  The boys were having so much fun that we stayed 3 1/2 hours before heading home.  At that point they had really started slowing down but it still took until we were back in Franklin for them to pass out.

Putting "coal" into the wheelbarrows and moving it into the "cave" is always a favorite activity.

Carter's getting a lot stronger and was able to the scoop on his own this time.

The temporary exhibit was the same one that was at the Adventure Science Center in Nashville the last time we were there. It was the "Good For You: Healthy Fun on the Run" exhibit.

The kayak is my personal favorite.

Carter spent a long time at the cash register weighing vegetables and having people buy them.

Apple picking was fun.

As was vegetable collecting.

The boys got to pet a bearded dragon.

Shy and scared Rylan didn't hesitate and also petted it!

The boys put on all the firefighter equipment (including super heavy and huge boots).

Instead of digging, the boys decided to play drums.

Carter seems to have discovered a new possible career.

This was the second of many days of missed and short naps this week.  The boys are exhausted!  Rylan didn't even make it through our first book tonight at bedtime before putting his head down on the couch and snoring within a minute of doing so.

Dinosaur Excavation

My mom is visiting this week and she gave the boys their Easter gifts when she got here.  The gift the boys were the most excited about and had to do right away were these dinosaur excavation kits.

Inside each kit was a block of a clay-like material, a chisel, and a hammer.

Brian helped Carter while my mom helped Rylan (though she did most of the work for him after he got lazy).

Eventually both blocks were chipped into small pieces and skeleton bones had been found!

Once the bones were put together, we had a triceratops and t-rex.  They are very cool!

Egg Decorating Kits

Today the boys, my mom, and I did a pair of egg decorating kits I had bought at Target after Easter last year for super cheap.

Inside each box was a huge set of decorating supplies (stickers, googly eyes, etc) and directions with suggestions for decorating each egg.

First we had to dye the eggs ...

The only way to get Rylan to look at me for a picture was to let him make a silly face.

Amazingly there were no spills this year and only a few small splashes!  Which is great because we usually dye eggs outside but there was snow on the ground when we got up this morning and it was still flurrying.  It looks like it's going to be a cold Easter this year!

Pretty eggs!

We went to storytime at the Brentwood Library and ate lunch and then got to work decorating the dyed eggs.

Carter chose the alien set.

Rylan chose the jungle animals.  His interest waned pretty quickly though and my mom ended up decorating most of his animals (that's why they look so good!).

Here are the final results ...

The kids keep playing with them so the eggs are starting to get cracked but at least they are enjoying them before they have to get tossed for stinky-ness.  And it was a fun project that took up a couple of hours!

Puppy Love

No Soccer Practice

We are almost midway through the season (3 of 8 games played) and I had to cancel soccer practice tonight because this is what the radar looked like 45 minutes before practice.

I know I'll be complaining about it being too hot soon, but I'm very ready for spring right now!

Blackstone Brewery

Brian and I tried out a new brewery tonight - Blackstone.  They have a restaurant with a small brewery inside as well as a separate brewery and bottling facility a few miles away.

I came across a Groupon for them awhile back for 2 pints of beer, $10 worth of food, 2 pint glasses to keep, and 4 bottled beers to bring home for $15.  It was a great deal.  We ended up with 2 dinners and 4 pints plus the take-home items and spent only another $25.  Plus the beer was pretty good!

Thanks Grandma for watching the boys so we can have some date nights!

Bring the Action

Carter has a few favorite songs right now.  Most of them are Mumford and Sons songs and the other is Scream & Shout by Will.i.am and Britney Spears, or as he calls it "Bring the Action".

Denver Business Trip

Brian barely made it out of Denver this morning before the airport starting delaying and cancelling flights because of snow.  He was in Denver since Tuesday for work and had been working 12-hour night shifts (that's what happens when you're testing your customer's network and they don't want to risk you bringing it down during business hours).

Brian worked last night (Friday night through Saturday morning) and had a 6:15 am flight back home this morning.  It started snowing on his way into work last night and never stopped.  After leaving work early this morning, he took an airport shuttle from the hotel to the airport.  And it was terrible.  The driver was late and just kept getting later through his next stops (trying to sell more people on the taking the shuttle, bathroom stops, etc).  Plus the roads were terrible.

Brian made it to the airport with 30 minutes until his scheduled departure time.  He checked his bag and made it to the gate just in time.  Unfortunately his bag didn't make it and since it was less than 45 minutes before his departure time, we have to pick it up from the airport.  Luckily we have to go there tomorrow anyway to pick up my mom who is visiting for a week.

Brian's flight made it out of Denver but most flights after his were delayed.  Thankfully filling out the paperwork for his bag didn't take too long because Carter had a soccer game this morning and Brian got to the game to watch Rylan just as we were starting.

Brian didn't do much in Denver other than work, sleep, and eat (at some good places at least).  But he and his two coworkers did fit in a brewery tour of Coors BEFORE work on Friday afternoon.  One of the guys sprung for the souvenir photo.

Zack, Matt, and Brian

The tour was free and included a few samples.  The brewery is close to Colorado School of Mines so on a Friday it was filled with college students filling up on free beer, but otherwise, it sounds like it was worth the visit.

We are so glad Brian is back home and he managed to stay awake almost all day and spend some time with us.  Because of Brian's schedule, the boys didn't get to talk to Brian all week and they definitely missed him (Mama's boy Rylan even wanted Brian over me when he got hurt today!).

Sky Bear

The kids and I went to the downtown library today for the marionette play. This month's play was Sky Bear (a Native American folktale about how the Milky Way was formed).  It was good and introduced the boys to lots of new subjects we haven't really talked about before (like constellations and Native Americans).  Luckily we got to the library early and the boys ran into the theater as soon as the doors were open because it was packed.  People even had to wait until the next performance an hour later because the room was completely full.  We were sitting front and center though and got to avoid the claustrophobia some people were feeling!

 

Other than that, we didn't do much today.  I sorted through thousands of Legos and got the boys' sets put back together after combining all our Legos for the contest Carter entered (which I still need to post about).  And I watched a frustrating NCSU team lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament.  I actually got to watch a lot of the game because it overlapped with naptime.

Mr. Considerate

Whenever Carter goes to the bathroom now, before he goes, he opens the door back up and yells out to me, "I will put the potty seat back down for you when I'm done!"  I guess he thought I was really serious (and concerned for me) when I told him I was going to fall in the potty one of these times because he keeps leaving the seat up!

Boulders

Our four boulders got delivered today.

We placed two in a bed in the middle of our yard that we are just starting - there are 5 trees lining the fence but that's it so far.  We planted those trees in the fall so they haven't grown yet, but they will EVENTUALLY be much larger.  Plus we give them steroids (fertilizer stakes twice a year - they are MAGIC).

Hopefully they are placed close enough the boys can hop between from rock to rock when they get a little older.

And the two other boulders are in a bed along the side of our yard.

One of our next projects is to dig a trench and place the edger stones we've recently picked up in the ground.  We weren't planning such a long bed here originally but our neighbors have let their yard get taken over by bermuda grass.  It is almost impossible to prevent it from spreading into our fescue lawn so we decided to create a barrier, in the backyard at least.  The bermuda hasn't taken over as much in their front yard (yet) but that is a much shorter length to fight.

We plan to rent a slit seeder in the next couple of weeks and try to get some grass growing in the backyard.  Now that we have the irrigation system we hope we can at least start getting some grass.  We have patches but it's mostly weeds since it wasn't sodded like our front yard.

Anyway, these pictures really don't give the boulders justice.  Once we get a few more projects completed and everything starts getting green, I'll post better photos.

Crocodile + Alligator

Rylan calls this animal ...

a "crocagator".