My mom arrives from Japan tomorrow and hopefully the baby's arrival will follow shortly after so we have a lot of last minute catch up to do here...:-)
So here are a bunch of fun activities we have been enjoying so far!
At the end of June we participated in our 3 day VBS. This was our 2nd year so we tried to improve on what we could have done better last year like handing out flyers in the neighborhood and advertising better with a big banner, etc... and it was definitely more successful than last year and got to see lots of new faces which was great:-) Madison seriously LOVED every minute of it and all the kids just could not get enough! Dave taught in the 7-9 year old class which is younger than his normal range since being a high school teacher he usually gets stuck with that age group so he had fun doing more of crafty stuff with his kids this time...
At first everyone gathers in the auditorium and goes over the theme "Creation" and plays short games and sing songs, etc... Everyone gets a chance to participate in one way or another in front of everyone and Madison's hand usually shot up to sing one of the songs and I would move my big belly over to secure a good spot to film our sweetie pie:-) On her left is Kaelie and right Brigette, two of her really close friends singing "My God is so Big!".
I thought I attempted to get more pics or videos of her but this video was the only one I could find...
The following week many of them suffered a post-VBS withdrawal and made us wish we had more opportunities for young kids to be a part during services... Well we have a hope of trying something in the fall IF this baby#2 of ours doesn't drain all our energy:-)
For the summer because we are all going to be together all the time and can do whatever we feel like I still wanted to stick to some kind of schedule so we don't let the summer disappear on us. So we are trying to stick to our very broad calender such as Monday being a day to take a day trip somewhere, Tuesday we do some kind of art project , etc... We were originally planning Thursday to be a Science Experiment day but it usually gets pushed back to Friday or Saturday when we forget to buy materials for it or are too tired from late Wednesday night and stuff... Anyhow we've successfully completed 3 experiments so far and found out that it is super fun to do science experiments with Madison!! and trust me I get into it too!
Science Experiment #1: Cornstarch and Water
I did this one near the end of the year with my students in school and it was a pretty big hit...it was an even bigger hit for my two girls at home...it is simply cornstarch mixed with water until you get a kind of pasty consistency...but the actual consistency is like nothing you will have ever felt before...Steve Spangler did a cool demonstration of corn starch and water on the Ellen show which you can look up on You Tube if you care to see more...
Science Experiment #2: Baking Soda Volcano
So we stayed pretty classic here, but Madison hadn't seen it before so it was new to her...
We ran out of vinegar so we started thinking what else we can try with and thought of lemons still hanging on our lemon trees that needed to be used sooner rather than later...
Science Experiment #3: Diet Coke & Mentos Volcano
A few days before the experiment we went to Wreck-it-Ralph, a movie in the park, which was a lot of fun...and mentos with diet coke were featured prominently...it took me a couple trials and a little research to find out the perfect number of mentos to create our maximum geyser...Madison helped me develop the paper cone we held the mentos in so we could dump as many as possible before getting out of the way...it went pretty good...
One of the Monday day trips was to Sea World in San Diego since Madison was missing her Shamu so much...:-) but this time the Cawthons family and Kathy who happened to be visiting them were available to go with us. We found out later we probably had met Kathy in NYC when we were attending Prospect Heights Church in Brooklyn but that's a really long story so I won't write that here but the whole day(14 hours total) went pretty fast and we had so much fun:-)
We were walking back to the car and happened to look down to find a set of duckie feet... Being 8 months pregnant and 14 hours on my feet will do that to you but I didn't mind it, it was such a fun day!
The following Monday we went North to Santa Barbara... because we wanted to :-)
Madison had started to really enjoy hitting this ball volleyball style at home and she continued her efforts at the beach...we actually found a net after this practice session and had fun trying to hit the ball over the net...
She got changed...:-)
The real reason we went to Santa Barbara is because Anna saw this Fish N Chips place featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives...so up the coast we went...
We got the whale to share...it was good!!
Santa Barbara itself was okay, but we didn't think the beaches were that great...perhaps it is like San Diego and it would take us a couple times of exploring to find the right places, but we would rather spend our day trips going to San Diego so I don't think we will venture north again anytime soon.
Well Madison continues to grow up too fast...last week we took her for her four year check-up...she was SOOOO excited...it was cute!
She gives her dolls and Mommy and Daddy check-ups all the time at home with her doctor set, so she was loving having it all done to her...with the small exception of the two shots she got...which only made her look confused at the nurse for a moment because this injection did not make a squeaky noise like the one at home :-) no tears though...she is officially already braver then me (Dave).
No comments:
Post a Comment