Little Miss's North Pole Express Field Trip

Little Miss's class went on a field trip today to the North Pole Express train in Grapevine. The Grapevine Depot was decorated with thousands of lights, animated charactors, and we walked through "falling snow" (it was actually tiny bubbles from the bubble machines) on our way to board the train. Before we boarded the train we went into the holding area where we sang Christmas carols with other schools there for the field trip.

Once on board there was more singing, a story time, and a visit from the man himself - Santa Claus!

After the train ride we headed over to Nash Farms for an outdoor picnic. The kids had a great time :)

Waco Road Trip

What an exhausting and fabulous day :)

We headed south to Waco this morning to meet our friends from Austin for a fun filled afternoon at the museum. We met at 11am at the Collin Street Bakery to fill our tummies with lunch and some of their yummy cookies and then it was on to visit the Mayborn Museum.

Our main purpose for the trip was to visit the Lego Castle Adventure exhibit. It was really amazing. There were building stations for old and young, dragons, knights, and even stained glass made completely out of legos, and the kids favourite - a computerized catapult.
After taking in our fill of the Lego exhibit we hit the rest of the museum. We spent 5 hours exploring the 17 themed Discovery rooms which included the Water and Bubbles Room, the Health Room, the Energy Room, and the People of the World Room. It was definitely worth the drive. Super fun summer day!

U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing

Today the kids and I along with one of Little Miss's friends and her mom went to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

I have been wanting to take a "field trip" to the BEP for some time but I wanted to take both of the kids. So since Little Miss is in school full-time I had to wait until there was a non-federal holiday to be able to go.

What a great outing!

On the way there I made a "worksheet" for the kids (I'm such a teacher!) that had four large circles and a large rectangle on it. We then gave each kid a quarter, dime, nickel, penny, and a dollar bill. Each child was supposed to draw each coin onto the circle and the dollar bill into the rectangle.

Here's what we ended up with :) I think if they'd had more time (they did these in the car on the way to the BEP) that they might have turned out pretty good!

You are not allowed to take any electronic equipment into the building so we left all of our stuff in the car, went through security, and then boarded the bus that takes you into the main building. We were the Red Tour group. Since our tour didn't start right away we went around the downstairs and learned about security features of the new notes, how to recover money that has been damaged, and how notes were made originally. We also saw the many different versions of notes through the years.

Then we set off on the tour. We got to see millions of dollars being printed, sorted, cut, stacked, and inspected. I believe that they said that they make around $267 million dollars every day and this year they will be making $151 billion for the Federal Reserve. After the tour we went and watched the educational video. It was really interesting. We learned that the engraved plates that are used to imprint the bills are hand engraved. An engraver must complete a 10 year engraver apprenticeship in order to actually engrave the plates and they do it all by hand ~ it was amazing to see.

Finally we toured the upstairs. The two most interesting displays for me were the note magnifier and the damaged note section. The note magnifier let us zoom in super close (that's the scientific term) to each bill and see the amazing security features added to each note including miniscule writing on different parts of each note. The damaged note section told how there are people at the Federal Reserve that are pretty much "forensic money" detectives. They can take severely damaged money and figure out the denominations of the bills. There was a story of a man that had been saving money his whole life by putting it behind his furnace in the basement. When he died his wife took the money only to find that it had "melted" together into solid bricks of money. She sent it to the Reserve and they examined the money and were able to determine that the value of the money that she had sent in was somewhere near $325,000 and they sent her a check for that amount.

Obviously I had a great time today. It was a little over the kids heads but they had fun just the same!

Here are the only pictures that we were able to take at the Bureau today :)

Little Miss's First Field Trip - Henrietta Apple Orchard

Today was Little Miss's First Field Trip :)

Her class has been studying apples and decided to take a field trip to the Henrietta Apple Orchard. I, of course, volunteered to chaperone the trip. I was assigned to keep 4 girls in my little group - we loaded onto the big yellow school bus and off we went!

Once we got there we watched a presentation on what life was like 100 years ago. They showed us how they harvested cotton, picked the cotton out of the plant, separated the cotton from the seed, and then spun the cotton into thread to be used to make cloth. It was very interesting. Then we learned about all of the apples and other crops that they grow on the orchard. We were then given a tour of the grounds and learned many fascinating things about earthworms, ponds, pecans, and of course, apples.

Great first field trip!!

Crazy Month :)

What a crazy month! I definitely need to be updating this blog more often with our fabulous family adventures.

Weekend in Tennessee (Jan 9 - Jan 11): Ryan and I had a super fun getaway at the beginning of January! Ryan's brother and sister in law live out in Tennessee. His brother has a "Polar Bear Campout" every January and Ryan and I have gone out there for the campout the last two years. Ryan and his brother go out and camp in FREEZING temperatures and my sister in law and I go shopping and sit by the nice warm fire :) We even got manicures and pedicures this year!

Weekend with Husky the Bear (Feb 5 - Feb 9): Little Miss's class has a class bear and once in a while she gets to bring him home. We spend the weekend showing Husky what our family likes to do and then she and I write about what we did in the journal and send it back to school. It's a great way for her to remember things and she also helps me write the journal entry. Husky came home the weekend of Feb. 5th. He helped us open the big box that was waiting at our front door. It was a present that Meme and Grandpa got for the kids. They each got a new Tag Reading System and Books. The kids think these are really cool and they are great educational toys. Little Man especially love the T-Rex book! Husky was also around when we built amazing structures with our tinker toys. He played outside with the kids on the deck over the weekend and even went to the awesome birthday party that we went to on Saturday!

Valentine's Day (Feb 14): Valentine's day this year was fun! For the kids Valentine's Day at school we decided to make our Valentine's cards again this year. We decided that we would make heart shaped crayons. It was so much fun! We rounded up all of the kids old and broken crayons and took all of the paper off of them. We then bought a silicon "cookie" sheet with small heart shaped molds. We broke up their old crayons and put a bunch of different coloured crayons in each mold and baked them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes on a low temperature. Then we let them cool for a bit. Once we took them out they were so neat! We then made our own cards that said "Happy Valentine's Day for "crayon" out loud". Finally I had each kid write their names on them and we stuck the crayon in the middle of the card.

Museum of Nature and Science Trip (March 11): We took another wonderful trip to the Museum of Nature and Science at Fair Park. Our wonderful friends took us along on another great day! We played in the water, banged on the instruments, played in the anthill, gathered items from the Farmers Market, and milked the cow. We then sat down for lunch and decided to trek on to the Texas Animals Exhibit which included Texas Dinosaurs, Ocean Dallas, Ice Age Dallas, and Wildlife Dioramas of Texas wildlife and wetland animals. They had displays of many of the different Texas animals along with a rocks and minerals section. They even had a real Paleontology Lab in the basement where we were able to watch real scientists working on fossils!

Kitchen Renovation: There is an end in site in the kitchen renovation!! My kitchen renovation started on May 24, 2008. My dad is a fabulous woodworker and offered to redo my kitchen cabinets for me :) Little did we know that it would turn into a year long renovation! We took off all of the cabinet doors, threw out the old cabinet drawers, and sanded down the existing cabinet frames. Then my dad rebuilt all of the doors and drawers. Finally we stained and polyed everything. Ryan and I ended up buying a new stainless steel dishwasher, microwave, cooktop, and double oven. Once we did that we realized that we'd have to rebuild an entire section of the kitchen. So my dad just finished and installed the double oven area. We decided to keep the double oven area but do away with a cabinet that was there and now we added a small "mud room" type area next to the garage door. I'm so excited!! Hopefully the entire renovation will be done by May so that we won't cross the year anniversary... I'll keep you updated :)

Here's the first week of cabinet demo and sanding.

May 2008

June 2008: Granite countertops go in, Dad putting on new drawer slides and backsplash has been demoed

November 2008: We've got doors (sort of) and a backsplash!

That's what's been going on the past month and an update on the ongoing kitchen project. I will definitely keep this blog updated in the future :)

Family Fun

These past couple of weeks we've been out and about. The weather has been nice and we've tried to spend as much time as possible outdoors before it gets too cold.

The kids and I spent some time with my mom and dad (Nana and G) on Friday the 21st. My Dad took them out riding on the riding lawn mower and then we all took turns racing across the yard.

Then we all went back inside and my Mom helped the kids make Thanksgiving cookies.

This last Tuesday the 25th we went with some friends to the Grapevine Public Library for their story time and puppet show. The kids loved it :) Little Man even stayed put for the whole show!

ICE! at the Gaylord Texan

With winter apparently upon us (although you wouldn't know it by the 74 degree temp today) we headed out today to the Gaylord Texan Resort to experience ICE! "Visitors will feel as though they have been transported to the North Pole as they bundle up in warm parkas and enter this winter wonderland created with TWO MILLION pounds of ice and kept at a wintry 9 degrees."
One of the mom's from Little Miss's class (it helps to have friends in high places) was able to get our entire class and their families tickets to ICE! We met the group up at the Gaylord this morning, bundled up all of the kids, and headed into the ICE! tent.




It was breathtakingly cold in the tent (we've been down here in Texas too long :) ). Decked out in our snow suits and extra long jackets, we walked from room to room to see the dazzling coloured ornaments, a candy land full of tempting treats, and a life-size Santa's lap to sit on. The kid's favourite "display" was the ice slide! Little Miss and Little Man went down over and over again :)






After the super cold of the ICE! exhibit, we came back into the Gaylord to experience the fabulous Christmas and holiday decorations that they put out... sprawling miniature trains, a HUGE gingerbread house, and Christmas trees of every colour. All of the displays combined with the Christmas music that was playing was enough to get anyone into the Christmas spirit!








As you can see, Little Man had a bit of a rough day but by the time we left, even he was smiling :)