Spring Break

For Spring Break we headed up to This Is The Place Heritage Park.  We love to come here in the springtime because we get to play with all the baby animals.  This stuff just brings me back.  My kids could not get enough of the baby chicks this year. We probably could have spent the whole day with just the chicks, but I tore them away to experience the rest of what this place has to offer.  The goats were the second favorite.  I must admit they are super cute.  Brennen  would catch them over and over again.  Another little Lucky in our family.  Actually this kid reminds me the most of my dad.  He not only looks like him but his mannerisms and dead on.  Brennen would be so happy living on a farm.  He's not afraid to get dirty, he loves to work, he's a hard worker, and he just gets stuff done and cowboy's up.  

donkey

My kids love this place.  they can play in the water, pan for gold, stamp leather and they even love to plow.

William tried his hand at walking on stilts.  For those of you who don't know I grew up walking on stilts.  My family was the original stilt makers at Swiss Days.  As kids we would "advertise"  all day by walking all over the grounds showing people how to do it and telling them where to buy them.  Needless to say I am a pro at stilt walking, so when William finally showed interest I was more than happy to show him how its done.  He tried and tried and finally got it. I was happy to call him one of mine.  I let him know that I still have a pair in the garage.  When we got home he immediatley began to practice.

This was a fun day.  the weather was perfect, the kids were well behaved and engaged, and I got a taste of my past.  I think I will make this a tradition.

little Lucky

After chopping down all those tree limbs it was time to cut them down to a more managable size for the fire pit.  I told Peter he needed to help haul all the sticks to the designated pile.  He figured out a way to work smarter not harder.  It was so funny and he reminded me of my dad so much this day.  The little neighbor girl was over and he just sat in his buggy pointing, directing, and bossing her around in such a laid back way that I couldn't help but think, "this is a little Lucky".  It made me smile to think that even though my dad is gone some how his influence is still here.  Even if its the one that bosses people around.

Blue Man group

The Blue Man Group came to Kingsbury Hall.  Scott was dead set on going and I will have to admit I wasn't against it. Scott even offered to invite my mom, what a sweetie.
 This act is a lot like STOMP and if I was honest, while the Blue Man Group was fun, STOMP was just a little better.  It was more creative and organic. To be critical there were a few too many awkward pauses in the show that lasted too long.  I found my attention wandering just a little. As with most of these kinds of things the last act was pretty sweet.
One very funny/disgusting part was the "nice" Italian dinner.  They took someone out of the audience and set her down give her an apron and treat her to a nice dinner of. . .  Twinkies.  They are aliens so they were trying to figure out how everything works and of course they loved jello.  Not to eat it, but watch it jiggle.  After they try to impress her with little things the audience member finally shows them how to open the Twinkies. Then the extra fun begins.  How does one eat a Twinkie.  After many funny antics they start to eat little by little with a fork and knife cutting it up in small pieces.  2/3rds of the way through dinner one of the aliens pukes out of his chest chewed up twinkie.  It is disgusting and hilarious all at the same time.  He scoops it up and eats it offering it to the audience member.  She politely declines.  After just a moment her apron beings to spurt out chewed up twinkie.  It totally takes us all by surprise including her.  Such laughter.  After the dinner scene a take out box emerges, they scoop up the chewed up twinkie and offers her the box.  She happily accepts and heads back to her seat.

The music was fun and the end was a party.  The last act was the Blue Men hosting a rock concert.  The whole audience must stand on its feet and do the different dance moves, the final move. . .shake your booty.  They had so many words for this turn of phrase it was admirable.  Then they turned up the heat, brought out the big balls threw them into the audience.  There was flashing lights, silly string spraying everywhere and what looked like rolls of toilet paper being blown here and there.  Quite exciting!

Geek of the Week

Here's another set of Geeks.  I swear these kids are so weird sometimes.

Wild Kratt's party

This is it, the end of a season for me.  My baby turned 5.  That means he goes to real school next year.  I don't think I know how to deal with that yet, so as with all things that are to hard I will put it off until I really need to address it.

Hunter, William, Brennen, Peter

  For Peter's birthday he really wanted to take people to Jump on it (a trampoline arena)  I originally thought that was a great idea, until I looked up how much it cost. In attempts to deter him from this idea I spat out all kinds of "cool" ideas., when I finally suggested a Wild Kratt's party his interest was piqued.Its important to understand children's attention span for activities.  For a 4-5 year old and hour and half is plenty of time for a party.  2 hours is really pushing it for this age.  I scheduled Peter's for 1 1/2 hours and it was perfect.

First order of business was to make "creature power suits"  these were really simple but a little time consuming.  I used felt and Velcro for the whole suit.  Felt it pretty cheap, so I bought black and just a little bit of blue and green. My local craft store also had Velcro in these colors so I picked some of that up as well.  

The vest was simple,  as you can see I used a paper bag as a template then folded my felt in half so I was cutting out 2 vests at a time.  Next I cut out the strips and circles. Before I sewed everything on I sewed a small square of Velcro on the large circle.  This is where we were going to attach the creature power disks.  When I sewed the large circle on I first sewed all around the circle to give it stability, THEN I sewed it on the vest leaving an opening in the top so they could store their creature power disks inside. I found a print off of the creature power disks online and then I just glued them to a cardboard circle and put a little quare of the pokie side of Velcro on it. I sewed the Velcro in strips on the side flaps (the soft side of Velcro on the front and the sticky side on the back flaps inside) then added the color strips on the side.  I did this so the kids could slip the vests over their head then wrap the flaps around and stick with the Velcro.  (This way it's size was adjustable.)  This was the party favor.  As a mom I hate those little trinkets and candies that kids come home with.  We usually just end up throwing them away the same day.  A lot of the parents were pleasantly surprised that the kids got to keep their vests and the kids were super stoked.

Sam

For games I came up with 5 creature powers.  The first was a beaver.  For this one we built beaver dams with pretzels and chocolate in my little fondue pot.  I did this one first so that kids could work on it while the others trickled in to the party.

Once everyone arrived and all the dams were done we headed outside for a Cheetah Chase.  I made cheetah tails with some fancy duct tape, just taped over itself. I did a couple of different variations of tag.  First was for everyone to try and steal others tails.  Another one was freeze tag, as well as regular tag.

After cheetah chase we learned about butterflies.  For those boys a little weary of butterflies I explained how amazing butterflies are.  They fly farther than any other animal (according to its size) etc.  the kids quickly got on board.  For the butterfly we got into teams of 2 and wrapped each other up in a chrysalis (toilet paper)  when it was time they got to break through and see how far they could fly.

Our 3rd creature power was the kangaroo.  And you guessed it, we had a hopping race.  I paired the kids up by size and let them go.  We also had them see how far they could jump with just one jump both feet together. After this one we needed to change things up so went inside to eat cake and open presents.  After I sugared them all up we went back outside to finish the games.  We had a scorpion  game which was a crawl on your belly race and lastly lizard hide and seek.  This was to demonstrate how well they could camouflage themselves.  this was a pretty fun party.  I like that the kids were all more than wiling to participate and, other than the vest was so simple to prepare for.  Happy Birthday my Peter Pie.  

Peter turns 5

 Peter really really wanted a rainbow cake for his birthday and he just HAD to help make it.  This took a lot of patience on my part but hey its HIS birthday not mine. 

He informed us for his birthday he wanted a gun and "straight up cash"  His words literally.  As you can see was ecstatic about both.  I was a little worried about his tendencies to be an arms dealer but I think the rainbow cake kind of balances it all out.  

Geek of the Week

Here's another Geek of the Week.  This Peter Pie is so funny with his outfits. He is so particular about what he wears and the more cool accessories the better. He begged me to take his picture because he thought he looked so super cool.  Sure dude, your cool.