New Adventures

This year, Gigi enters first grade. She is six now and it's time for her to become more socially involved with her peers.

With this in mind, we have signed her up for Karate classes through a local Homeschool co-op as well as Girl Scouts. i believe we will involve her in more activity, possibly a sport in the Spring (we're thinking t-ball or soccer). She has expressed tons of interest in voice lessons, but I have not been able to find an instructor that will take on a 6 year old - the ones I have contacted will only begin lessons at 7 years old.

Little man will be attending some classes of his own this year. Our local Family Resource Center provides some great group classes for little ones. We will be participating in Little Amigos (Spanish class), Music and More and Wonder Years (Skills for 2 and 3 year olds) on a rotating basis. I am also planning on signing him up for our local Tiny Tots program which is ran by the Parks department. Gigi was in this program for 2 years and loved it. It's a drop-off class, twice a week for 2 hours each time. This will not happen until January though as he needs to be 3 and his birthday is not until the end of October.

In addition to these outside activities, we are also keeping our annual family passes to Busch Gardens and we have added annual family passes to MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry).

As far as school is concerned, I recently posted about our goals for this year on our Homeschool blog. I have a separate blog for school because I need to show certain things at the end of the year to our evaluator and it just makes it easier. You can read about that through this link if you want.

Until next time, here are some random pictures of the kids:

MOSI

Remember that family pass we purchased?? Well, it also gets us into the Museum of Science and Industry. So, we did that today!

This was the first time any of us had been there, so that was pretty neat.

I must say, this place is HUGE!! There are TONS of cool things to do - all hands on, which is perfect for our little busy body. We were there for a bit over 3 hours and there was an entire floor we never got around to seeing. Another reason I am SO glad we decided to take the plunge and buy these passes!

We had such a great time and I can't wait to go back again.

Unfortunately, the battery in my camera died, so I have very limited pictures. You'll just have to trust me on this one, there was lots to do and we had a blast!

Stars and Moons

Today we went to the library. We visited a different library than normal..one that is actually closer to our house. They had story time and after, they had a little art class for all kids age 3-5.

The stories from story time had all been about the moon and stars and so, the art project was as well.

Each child was given a large sheet of paper that had stars and two phases of the moon outlined on it. They then had to color in the stars and moons using oil pastels. When that was done, they took some blue watercolor and painted over the entire page to make the night sky.

I think Gigi did a great job!

Aquarium Fun

When we last went to GWiz, we decided to splurge and a buy a family annual pass. It had cost us about $25 to get into the museum that day. For $50 more, we were able to buy the family pass. We decided to go for it because of the great benefits of the pass. It does not only allow us access to Gwiz as often as we like for the next year, but also other attractions as well.

So today we decided to put our pass to good use and spend the day at the aquarium.

We've taken Gigi several times before, but this was J's first visit. It was pretty cool to be able to just walk right in because of the passes!

I'll be honest, the aquarium itself is actually quite small. You can go through the entire building in about an hour or less, depending on how much time you stop to to look at each thing.

What excites me about having the passes is that we have unlimited access to the outdoor part of the aquarium. Outside, they have a water play area for the kids that is just awesome!!

The ground is soft so I don't get so worried about Gigi running around. There is a huge Pirate ship in the middle of the play area and slides and water fountains all around. Off to the side there are sandboxes and even a water gun fighting area.

Today, Gigi spent her time running through the Pirate ship and going on the slides. Since there is no standing water, only spraying water, you wouldn't think the kids would get all that wet...she was SOAKED!! It was so hot outside though that I'm sure it felt nice.

J had fallen asleep by the time we went outside. When he finally woke up, I realized just how wet Gigi was getting and didn't want to take J in because that meant I'd get soaked too. So, he missed out this time.

Good thing we can go whenever we want for the entire next year!

I'm really glad we have these passes!!

Park Fun

While at the beach yesterday, Gigi wanted to play on the playground. Since it was so late in the evening though, I told her it would have to wait until another day.

Well, today we had an appointment to go to that was not far from the park, so I made a slight detour to go play. Unfortunately, we could not stay long since it was just too darn hot to be out there. We only stayed for about a half hour total and we were all drenched in sweat as we packed back into the van.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and I realized that I should have just packed a lunch and our bathing suits and made an afternoon of it. I'll have to make that a future plan I guess.

It was short lived, but Gigi still had fun!

Beach Fun

Today hubby called as he was driving home from work and told me to get the kids into their bathing suits. He wanted to go to the beach.

It was a beautiful day, so I thought it was a great idea - especially mid-week; it was a nice break from the ordinary.

The kids and I were all set by the time hubby got home. We packed up the van and went to one of our favorite little local beaches.

Since it was 6pm by this time, the beach was pretty empty - which I like! We didn't stay too long, since they close at 7pm, but we did have fun.

The water was a perfect temperature and felt so nice! Gigi and hubby spent lots of time building a sand castle.

It was a fun, unexpected outing!

G Whiz

Today we went out for the day to a local museum called "GWhiz". It's a children's hands on science museum. At first glance, it is surprisingly small for a museum, really just one large room. However once we stopped and looked at each item, we realized there really is lots to do there. Plus, some of things actually took quite a bit of time to complete, and others we had to walk away from so as not to become too frustrated. :)

Gigi loved the fact that she was actually able to touch everything. She even played with dinosaurs and took pictures of them to make her own mini movie.

There were lots of fun things to play with there. Even J was able to get in on some of the action!

Hubby had fun with blocks too!

All in all it was a pretty nice day! Fun and educational!! My favorite mix :)

A day at the Zoo!

Ok, I'm really behind on my blogging...sorry!! Anyway, last Friday (April 24) we went to the zoo for the day.

First off, I must say I was shocked by the cost to get in - $55 for us!! Plus, I was a bit ticked when I realized that all of the rides are a separate charge, most were $2-$3 each!!

Now that I've shown just how cheap, um I mean, frugal I am.... onto the pictures of the day;

Tiny Tots Field Day

Gigi attends a program called Tiny Tots. It is a free preschool-like program for 2-5 year olds ran by the parks department. She attends class at local park two day a week for two hours a day. It's really for social interaction more than academics. We cover much more at home than they do there.

Anyway, this is her second year. Normally toward the end of the "school" year all the tiny tots classes from the entire county get together for "Tiny Tot Olympics". It's a fun day with lots of little obstacle courses for the kids and at the end of the day, everyone gets a medal for participating. Gigi had a blast last year.

Gardenville Troop 2008

Tiny Tot Olympics Medal 2008

Unfortunately, this year due to the all the budget cuts, there will be no Tiny tot Olympics. Instead Gigi's class got together with one other for a field day. They tried to make it similar to the Tiny Tot Olympics, but on a smaller scale.

They still had several little obstacle courses set up, but everyone just kind of did whatever they wanted.

They had a "jumpy thing" (what Gigi calls it) and a huge inflatable slide as well. Gigi LOVES these things so she was thrilled about that.

While it was smaller and there were much less kids than last year and no medal at the end, it was still fun!

We even squeezed in some playground time so J could get on his first public park swing!