April 28 - We're Sisters Now

Okay...One more story about spring break that I have to share. Julia slept in Victoria's room for most of the trip. They shared clothes several days and by the end of the week, Julia moved all of her clothes from the suitcase into Victoria's dresser and closet. The day before we left, I gathered all of her clothes and packed them back to the suitcase. The next morning, I checked the suitcase and guess what? Julia's clothes were missing. The little stinker had moved all of her clothes back to Victoria's room! She told me "Mommy, we aren't cousins, we're sisters now. Can we stay here and so Victoria and I can share a room?" Oh my goodness, talk about melting my heart. 

Here are the "sister's" over the years. Love these two girls!!

April 26 - Museum of Life and Science

Okay peeps, I'm on my last spring break post and I've saved the best for last: Museum of Life and Science. This museum, located in Durham, NC (http://lifeandscience.org/) can be defined in one word: perfection. We didn't even see the inside of the museum and I'm already planning to send the kids there for a week of summer camp when they are older (heads up Greg and Jill..). Yes, it was that fabulous!! 

Dinosaur Trail: the kids climbed and slid down this bad boy, and then we went for a nature walk seeing other life size replicas. 

Digging for fossils: kids, dirt, and shovels-always a good combination

 Train Ride

Did I mention they have BEARS at this place? And WOLVES?! Look at this beautiful walkway to their habitats. I can only imagine how gorgeous it is during the fall.

There is a black bear in the far back:

Andrew licking Greg's head-just too funny to leave out!

Learning about wind by navigating sailboats

Air cannons

Butterfly rainforest - Julia is standing VERY still

A rare one of the mom's!

Trampoline fun! The first video is Victoria (about 3.5min) and the next is Julia and Andrew (about 7min). Luke was too small. 

Alpacas Fun

Looks like a blast, right? I didn't even capture everything we did-there was an outdoor farm area with pigs and goats, a big amphibian exhibit, and a huge seed tower the kids played with-simply a perfect afternoon!! And we capped off this perfect day with a trip to Moe's!

Greg, Jill, Victoria and Andrew-we had a blast and can't wait for more fun adventures with you. The only way our week could have been more fab is if we saw Aunt Katherine and her family, but unfortunately she threw her back out.

Toodles! 

April 23 - Greystone Rec Center

If you are checking in, I'm still recapping our March spring break vacation to Raleigh. I know I'm about a month behind in posts, sorry!! I'm trying to catch up. 

On Thursday of Spring Break, we went to story time at the most beautiful library ever. The girls and Andrew  enjoyed story time while Luke and I explored the library. After that, we went to Greystone Rec Center, a fabulous indoor play area. The kids had a blast!!

Story Time

Gorgeous Library 

Future rock climbers

Playground fun

All 4 cousins playing together!

Luke cooking me a "hotdog" at 10pm (he was up WAY past his bedtime)

April 18 - Pump It Up

Victoria and Andrew had a half day of school on our third day, so Julia and Luke played on their cousins awesome play set in the backyard. Uncle Greg was a trouper playing various tag games with Julia and pushing the kids on the swings (thanks Uncle Greg!). When Victoria and Andrew came home, we headed out for our next adventure: Pump It Up (http://www.pumpitupparty.com/). If you have a child between the ages of 3 and 8, you've been probably been to one these places before. In fact, I'm sure you've been several times for various birthday parties (we went 5 weekends in a row to the place in Houston earlier this year). For those of you unfamiliar with these places, there are usually several different types of bounce houses (either a private room for your party or a larger play area) and then private party rooms for cake and ice cream. A little bit of advice-if something like this does not exist in your city, you should seriously consider opening one. They are a cash cow. Kids LOVE them and they are always packed on the weekends for parties. During the week they have free play and sometimes camps. 

So-back to Pump It Up. We went to free play and it was AWESOME. The facility and bounce houses were practically brand new and there was only one other family there. We practically had the whole place to ourselves. There was a cool wind machine the kids tried out that had really high winds.The kids LOVED it!

Here is the little man climbing up the big slide.

This place also had the coolest-bar none-bounce house I've ever seen. Here is  a photo:

See the squares? We had rectangle shaped pieces of canvas with Velcro, similar to ribbons (you can see a few in the above picture). We had to jump (or crawl up like the girl in the video) to either attach them or get them down. Peeps-it was so much fun I could have done this for hours straight. It was also great exercise! Julia played in this thing almost the entire time we were there. Andrew and Luke were too small to do it, but the rest of us got into the action. Here is a video with appearances by Julia, Victoria and one out of shape mommy (yours truly) who had a blast.

Next up-Greystone Rec Center.