More Hotel-Crashing

GG and Max came down on Saturday for the twins' birthday party on Sunday. We shopped, went out to dinner, and crashed their hotel swimming pool (of course!). This hotel's indoor pool is nice because there's a normal sized "big" pool and a one-foot-deep little pool. The twins LOVE this little pool.

It was a really nice break before the madness that was the twins' third birthday party began the next morning.

Well, almost everyone enjoyed it.

Just Chatting

Here's a funny series of pictures of Miss Vivian talking to her Aunt Rachel about their dinosaur party this past weekend.

(Full post about the party to come)

First Movie

Our local movie theater is playing kid movies for $1 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And, Gavin and Vivian's school has started taking advantage of this opportunity. Since G & V go to school on Tuesdays, they too have the chance to go to the movies with their class.

When we heard about these outings, we were excited for them but also a little upset. Mainly because they had never been to a movie before and Wes and I wanted to share that experience with them. So, we decided to go with their class the first Movie Tuesday of the summer.

Here they are enjoying a half a hash brown on the way to the movie theater.

And here they are walking into their
first movie: Happy Feet 2!

They did okay. Gavin lost interest about 40 minutes in (we were actually shocked that he lasted that long) and even Vivian became restless after about an hour. A few of their classmates fell asleep and a few walked around and jumped in their chairs. Oh well. I guess this is what movies are like with a bunch of three-year-olds.

Strawberry Cobbler

After the baking soda activity (see last post), we decided to make something else from Pinterest that afternoon: strawberry cobbler!

Step One: Pour frozen strawberries (or any frozen berry) in a pan

Step Two: Pour an entire bag of dry cake mix (vanilla or white) over the frozen strawberries.

Step Three: Pour an entire can of Sprite on top.

Step Four: Stick your fingers in said mixture and eat as much as you can while your mom runs into the kitchen for all of 45 seconds to get something.

Step Five: Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.
Step Six: Forget to take photos of the finished product.

Step Seven: Eat!

Baking Soda + Vinegar + Color = FUN!

I found this activity on Pinterest a while back and then when my friend, Maren, successfully did it with her kids, I knew we had to try it. I basically just put some baking soda in a container, dyed vinegar different colors, and let the kids pour spoonfuls of vinegar into the baking soda. They were totally amazed by the colorful fizzy fun.

They quickly realized that it was also really
fun to pour baking soda into the vinegar.

Butterflies!

On Wednesday, we went to a local farm that has a butterfly conservatory each June. They have a green house full of beautiful flowers and hundreds of butterflies. Gavin and Vivian were in awe of it all.

The coolest part was the "butterfly wands" we were given. They were just Q-tips dipped in Gatorade and the butterflies were drawn to them. We just held the Gatorade-soaked Q-tip under the nose of a butterfly and then the butterfly would climb onto our sticks. We could then walk around with our butterfly wands until they flew away.

She caught one!

Here's Gavin waiting patiently while one of the butterfly experts helped him catch one.

Gavin eventually got one, too!

Wes and I caught a few of our own!

After the butterflies, it was time to go on the infamous tunnel slide. It's VERY long and VERY fun!

At this particular farm (we come here once each season for different events), there are a lot of little activities for the kids to do like banging pots and pans with sticks, racing rubber duckies by pumping water into troughs, playing in a bunch of blown plastic houses, feeding (and petting) various animals, riding an old vintage carousel, and a few other things.

 Paxton slept the whole time.

It was a ridiculously hot, but very fun, day at the farm.

Movie Day

A couple of weeks ago, we had to keep the kiddos home from school because they were sick. Naturally, we had a movie day with blankets, pillows, and popcorn.